When any considerable fall of timber is made we should make them in roads, beginning always on the north side, in order that the wind, which generally blows in frosty weather, may dissipate that humidity which is so prejudicial to the underwood.
There might be also many other useful consequences drawn from our observations; but we shall content ourselves with having briefly adverted to some, because the ingenious man may supply what we have omitted by paying a little attention to the observations we have mentioned. We are well convinced there are a great number of further experiments to be made on this matter; and perhaps even those which we have related will engage some persons to work on the same subject, and from our hints general and useful advantages may be derived.
[ON THE TEMPERATURE OF THE PLANETS.]
MAN newly created, and even the ignorant man at this day beholds the extent and nature of the universe only by the simple organ of light: to him the earth is but a solid body, whose volume is unbounded, and whose extent is without limits, of which he can only survey small superficial spaces: while the sun and planets seem to be luminous points, of which the sun and moon appear to be the only objects worthy regard in the immensity of the heavens. To this false idea on the extent of nature and the proportions of the universe is joined the still more disproportionate sentiment of superiority. Man, by comparing himself with other terrestrial beings, feels that he ranks the first, and hence he presumes that all was made for him; that the earth was created only to serve for his habitation, and the heavens for a spectacle; and in short the whole universe ought to yield to his necessities, and even his pleasures. But in proportion as he makes use of that divine light, which alone ennobles his being; in proportion as he obtains instruction, he is forced to abate his pretensions; he finds himself lessened in proportion as the universe increases in his ideas, and it becomes demonstrable to him, that the earth, which forms all his domain, and on which unfortunately he cannot subsist without trouble and sorrow, is as small with respect to the universe, as he is with respect to the Creator. In short, from study and application, he finds that there does not remain a possible doubt, that this earth, large and extensive as it may seem to him, is but a moderate sized planet, a small mass of matter, which, with others, has a regular course round the sun: for as it appears our globe is at the distance of at least 33 millions of leagues, and the planet Saturn at 313 millions, the natural conclusion is, that the extent of the sun’s empire is a sphere, whose diameter is 627 millions of leagues, and that the earth, relative to this space, is not more than a grain of sand to the volume of the globe.
However, the planet Saturn, although the furthest from the sun, is not by any means near the confines of his empire: his limits extend much further, since comets pass over spaces beyond that distance, as may be estimated by the time of their revolutions: a comet which like that of the year 1680 revolves round the sun in 575 years must be 15 times more remote from him than Saturn; for the great axis of its orbit is 138 times greater than the distance from the earth to the sun. Hence we must still augment the extent of the solar power 15 times the distance from the sun to Saturn, so that all the space in which the planets are included is only a small province of his domain, whose bounds should be placed at least 138 times his distance from the earth.
What immensity of space! What quantity of matter! For independently of the planets, there is a probability of the existence of 400 or 500 comets, perhaps larger than the earth, which run over the different regions of this vast sphere of which the terrestrial globe only constituting a part, a unity on 191,201,612,985,514,272,000, a quantity represented by numbers, which imagination cannot attain or comprehend.
Nevertheless, this enormous extent, this vast sphere, is yet only a very small space in the immensity of the heavens; each fixed star is a sun, a center of a sphere equally as extensive; and as we reckon more than 2000 of these fixed stars perceived by the naked eye, and as with telescopes we can discover so much the greater number as these instruments are more powerful; the extent of the universe appears to be without bounds and the solar system forms only a province of the universal empire of the Creator; an infinite empire like himself.