What A Billion Means

The following remarkable calcula tioa on the leugtb of time wliich i would take a person to oonnt 1,000, 000,000 recently appeared in au issue o an Engish periodical : What is a bil lioD? The reply is very simple. Iu Eng laúd a billion is a million times a mi! lion. This isquickly written and quick er still pronounced. Butnoman is abl to coullt it. Yon will oonnt 160 or 17 a miDute. Bnt let us suppose that yo go np as high as 200 a minute, hou after honr. At that rate yon woult count 12,000 an hour; 288,000 a day or 105,120,000 in a year. Let us sup pose now that Adam, at the beginnin of nis extistence, had began to couni had contiuued to do so and was courn ing still. Had such a thing been pos sible, he would not yet have finisbec the task of counting a billiou ! To coun a billion would require a person t count 200 a minute for a period o 9,512 years, 542 davs, 5 hours anc 20 minutes, providing he shoul count coutiuuously. But suppose v allow the counter twelve hours dail for rest, eatDg and sleeping. Then h would need 18,025 years, 319 days, 1 hours 45 minutes in whicb t complete the task!