between the antheræ and the stigmata, and is probably soon over. The maturation of the impregnated seed, which in other plants proceeds within a capsule, exposed together with the rest of the flower to the open air, is here carried on, and during the whole winter, within the heart, as we may say, of the earth, that is, "out of the reach of the usual effects of frost." But then a new difficulty presents itself. Seeds, though perfected, are known not to vegetate at this depth in the earth. Our seeds, therefore, though so safely lodged, would, after all, be lost to the purpose for which all seeds are intended. Lest this should be the case, "a second admirable provision is made to raise them above the surface when they are perfected, and to sow them at a proper distance;" viz. the germ grows up in the spring, upon a fruitstalk, accompanied with leaves. The seeds now, in common with those of other plants, have the benefit of the summer, and are sown upon the surface. The order of vegetation externally is this: the plant produces its flowers in September; its leaves and fruits in the spring following. * V. I give the account of the Dionaea muscipula, an extraordinary American plant, as some late authors have related it: but whether we be yet enough acquainted with the plant, to bring every part of this account to the test of repeated and familiar observation, I am unable to say. "Its leaves are jointed, and furnished with two rows of strong prickles; their surfaces covered with a number of minute glands, which secrete a sweet liquor that allures the approach of flies. When these parts are touched by the legs of flies, the two lobes of the leaf instantly spring up, the rows of prickles lock themselves fast together, and squeeze the unwary animal to death." Here, under a new model, we recognise the ancient plan of nature, viz. the relation of parts and provisions to one another, to a common office, and to the utility of the organized body to which they belong. The attracting syrup, the rows of strong prickles, their position so as to interlock the joints of the leaves; and what is more than the rest, that singular irritability of their surfaces, by which they close at a touch; all bear a contributory part in producing an effect, connected either with the defence or with the nutrition of the plant. + This plant, since Paley wrote, has been extensively employed in the preparation of the Vinum Colchicum, and is the basis of several medicines for the cure of the gout, and other disorders. Smellie's Phil. of Nat. Hist. vol. i. p. 5. ↑ Paley speaks doubtingly of the phenomena exhibited by the Dionea muscipula, but they have since been confirmed and witnessed by numerous botanists and cultivators. A still more extraordinary instance of motion in plants is that exhibited by the Hedysarum gyrans, a native of the banks of the Ganges. Its leaves are ternate, composed of one large leaflet in the middle, and two smaller at its sides. These are in constant motion; sometimes equably, sometimes spasmodically; but without any unity in the movements. If the motion is suspended by grasping the leaves with the hand, it is renewed with more rapidity when the restraint is removed, subsiding gradually to its regular pace. It does not depend upon the stimulus of light or heat, because the movements continue during the hours of night, as well as throughout the day. (Keith's Physiolog. Botany.) The vegetable substances, by their number, their variety of appearance, chemical properties, taste, and smell, would imply, to a non-chemical reader, a great diversity of composition. Such persons would never suspect that three substances, almost exclusive of others, enter into the com- CHAPTER XXI. THE ELEMENTS. WHEN We come to the elements, we take leave of our mechanics; because we come to things, of the organization of which, if they be organized, we are confessedly ignorant. This ignorance is implied by their name. To say the truth, our investigations are stopped long before we arrive at this point. But then it is for our own comfort to find, that a knowledge of the constitution of the elements is not necessary for us. For instance, as Addison has well observed, we know water sufficiently, when we know how to boil, how to freeze, how to evaporate, how to make it fresh, how to make it run or spout out in what quantity and direction we please, without knowing what water is." The observation of this excellent writer has more propriety in it now, than it had at the time it was made for the constitution, and the constituent parts, of water, appear in some measure to have been lately discovered; yet it does not, I think, appear, that we can make any better or greater use of water since the discovery, than we did before it.* No fact more decidedly evinces the power of God, and his contrivance for the preservation of the world, than that of the utter indestructibility of elementary matter; for by no contrivance, can be lessened the number of atoms first created in the earth. The chemist can devise no process by which such an attempt would be successful. Fire merely alters the arrangement of matter, it does not destroy a particle. The gas produced by the combustion of a piece of charcoal, or wood, or coal, absorbed by the leaves of vegetables, and enters into the composition of wood, is arranged so as to form, once more, fuel or fresh food; and however long this experiment may be carried on, the result is always uniform; not a particle is lost; it is merely altered in appearance, now solid; then in gas; again digested, by vegetables; again solidified in vegetable matters. However we vary the investigation, the result is invariably the same, whether we witness the slow decomposition of a lifeless tree, exposed to the weather, or behold its more rapid destruction in our fires, it tends only to the same great result; it is merely a change, the transmigration of particles of matter. This fact cannot be too often repeated, or be too deeply impressed upon the student's attention; by no scheme, or contrivance, can we annihilate created matter; we may alter the form in which it appears, but we never can destroy a single atom. We have, in a former chapter, alluded to various curious laws which regulate the atmospheric air, the first of the four great masses, of which the ancient philosophers erroneously considered the world to be composed, and from whence Paley has derived his idea of this chapter on "the elements." We have only briefly to remark, in this place, upon one or two of the modern discoveries, in the examination of the other three, viz. Water, Fire, and Earth. First, with regard to Water; there are certain deviations made, in its instance, from the laws which regulate all other fluids, distinctly marking a contriving power. Thus all other fluids contract, or become more dense, as their temperature is diminished-there is no limit known to their contraction; water is the solitary exception. This universal fluid is found only to contract to a certain point, 40° of Fahrenheit's thermometer; but after that point the loss of heat causes it to expand. The effect is admirable, for in consequence, ice, as it is formed, floats on the surface of the water; for ice is not formed until the temperature of the water is 320 of Fahrenheit; or, eight degrees below 40. Swimming on the surface, it is melted as soon as warmer seasons, or winds of a higher temperature arise. Had water been governed by the same law which regulates other fluids, the ice would have sunk to the bottom, as it was formed, and there remained unmelted; since, into great depths of water, the sun's rays never penetrate. Our lakes, and the bottom of the sea, in consequence, would have been eternally frozen-mere quarries of ice. If we exclude the contrivance of the Architect, we can assign no rational reason for this extraordinary, however necessary, deviation, in the case of water, from the general laws which govern all other fluids. The very existence of heat, the caloric of the chemists, is another proof of the divine origin of the earth we inhabit; for, without its presence, all fluids would have been solid, as quicksilver always is in the arctic regions; and animal and vegetable life could not have been sustained. If sufficient warmth, or latent heat, had been created in bodies, there could be no reason for the existence of fire, or combustion, except the goodness of the contriving Author: yet, without its agency, a great portion of the earth would be uninhabitable; and man must have lived, like the beasts of the field, upon undressed food. The presence of heat, in all inorganic bodies, was unnecessary, as regards their creation; they might have well existed entirely without it; but then the globe must have been untenanted; the earth an impenetrable rock; the ocean a solid crystal. The chemical examination of the earth is full of wonders. The mixture of different soils, for instance, so essential to the production of vegetation, and so universal on the surface of the earth, again betrays the work of a contriving Mind. Three earths-lime, clay (alumina), and flint (silica), constitute the great mass of the earth we inhabit; are present in all soils: two of them exist, as necessary ingredients, in all vegetables. These earths, had chance formed them, or accident thrown them together, would of necessity have been found, on the earth's surface, in great and distinct masses. Mountains of pure alumina would, at least occasionally, have been discovered by the side, or piled upon masses of pure silex. The strata would have We can never think of the elements, without reflecting upon the number of distinct uses which are consolidated in the same substance. The air supplies the lungs, supports fire, conveys sound, reflects light, diffuses smells, gives rain, wafts ships, bears up birds. 'E vdaros та πаνта: water, besides maintaining its own inhabitants, is the universal nourisher of plants, and through them of terrestrial animals; is the basis of their juices and fluids; dilutes their food; quenches their thirst; floats their burdens. Fire warms, dissolves, enlightens is the great promoter of vegetation and life, if not necessary to the support of both. We might enlarge, to almost any length we please, upon each of these uses: but it appears to me almost sufficient to state them. The few remarks, which I judge it necessary to add, are as follow: I. Air is essentially different from earth. There appears to be no necessity for an atmosphere's investing our globe (the moon has none); yet it does invest it: and we see how many, how various, and how important, are the purposes which it answers to every order of animated, not to say of organized, beings, which are placed upon the terrestrial surface. I think that every one of these uses will be understood upon the first mention of them, except it be that of reflecting light, which may be explained thus: If I had the power of seeing only by means of rays coming directly from the sun, whenever I turned my back upon the luminary, I should find myself in darkness. If I had the power of seeing by reflected light, yet by means only of light reflected from solid masses, these masses would shine indeed, and glisten, but it would be in the dark. The hemisphere, the sky, the world, could only be illuminated, as it is illuminated, by the light of the sun being from all sides, and in every direction, reflected to the eye, by particles, as numerous, as thickly scattered, and as widely diffused, as are those of the air. Another general quality of the atmosphere is the power of evaporating fluids. The adjustment of this quality to our use is seen in its action upon the sea. In the sea, water and salt are mixed together most intimately; yet the atmosphere raises the water, and leaves the salt. Pure and fresh as drops of rain descend, they are collected from brine. If evaporation be solution (which seems to be probable), then the air dissolves the water, and not the salt. Upon whatever it be founded, the distinction is critical; so much so, that when we attempt to imitate the process by art, we must regulate our distillation with great care and nicety, or, together with the water, we get the bitterness, or, at least, the distastefulness, of the marine substance: and, after all, it is owing to this original elective power in the air, that we can effect the separation which we wish, by any art or means whatever. By evaporation, water is carried up into the air; by the converse of evaporation, it falls down upon the earth. And how does it fall? Not by the clouds being all at once reconverted into water, and descending like a sheet; not in rushing down in columns from a spout; but in moderate drops, as from a colander. Our watering-pots are made to imitate showers of rain. Yet, à priori, I should have thought either of the two former methods more likely to have taken place than the last. By respiration, flame, putrefaction, air is rendered unfit for the support of animal life. By the constant operation of these corrupting principles, the whole atmosphere, if there were no restoring causes, would come at length to be deprived of its necessary degree of purity. Some of these causes seem to have been discovered, and their efficacy ascertained by experibeen occasionally distinct; the divisions separate, and defined-but this is never the case on our globe. The earths are invariably found mixed together; or, if a specimen of a pure earth is discovered, its rarity speedily entitles it to a place in the museum of the mineralogist. The ingenuity of the geologist provides for this difficulty, by imagining that this earth of ours was once in a semi fluid state; either a great bubble of mud, or melted by heat. The professors, however, of this science, readily allow that either theory is incapable of explaining all the phenomena of the earth. The existence of the great fossil beds of rock salt, for instance, will satisfy every reader of this insufficiency of the geologists' theories. Water would have melted, and intense heat readily evaporated or sublimed, these saline masses. Yet, amid all this seeming chance, these endless mechanical mixtures of the earths in all soils, the chemists' investigations clearly inform us that, without this mixture, no plants could have existed. No vegetable, for instance, will grow in either pure lime, pure alumina, or pure flint; nay, if either earth constitutes only nineteen parts out of twenty, of any soil, such land is absolutely barren. The mixture, therefore, must have been made from the creation; otherwise no vegetable substance could have been produced. The credulity of the atheist, however, allows him to believe in the accumulation together of all these strange and very extraordinary number of improbabilities, by far too closely approximating to miracles, in their nature, to render them readily distinguishable. ment. And so far as the discovery has proceeded, it opens to us a beautiful and a wonderful economy. Vegetation proves to be one of them. A sprig of mint, corked up with a small portion of foul air, placed in the light, renders it again capable of supporting life or flame. Here, therefore, is a constant circulation of benefits maintained between the two great provinces of organized nature. The plant purifies what the animal had poisoned; in return, the contaminated air is more than ordinarily nutritious to the plant. Agitation with water turns out to be another of these restoratives. The foulest air, shaken in a bottle with water for a sufficient length of time, recovers a great degree of its purity. Here then again, allowing for the scale upon which nature works, we see the salutary effects of storms and tempests. The yeasty waves which confound the heaven and the sea, are doing the very thing which was done in the bottle. Nothing can be of greater importance to the living creation, than the salubrity of their atmosphere. It ought to reconcile us therefore to these agitations of the elements, of which we sometimes deplore the consequences, to know, that they tend powerfully to restore to the air that purity, which so many causes are constantly impairing.* II. In Water, what ought not a little to be admired, are those negative qualities which constitute its purity. Had it been vinous, or oleaginous, or acid; had the sea been filled, or the rivers flowed, with wine or milk; fish, constituted as they are, must have died: plants, constituted as they are, would have withered: the lives of animals which feed upon plants, must have perished. Its very insipidity, which is one of those negative qualities, renders it the best of all menstrua. Having no taste of its own, it becomes the sincere vehicle of every other. Had there been a taste in water, be it what it might, it would have infected every thing we ate or drank, with an importunate repetition of the same flavour. Another thing in this element, not less to be admired, is the constant round which it travels; and by which, without suffering either adulteration or waste, it is continually offering itself to the wants of the habitable globe. From the sea are exhaled those vapours which form the clouds: these clouds descend in showers, which penetrating into the crevices of the hills, supply springs; which springs flow in little streams into the valleys; and there uniting, become rivers; which rivers, in return, feed the ocean. So there is an incessant circulation of the same fluid: and not one drop probably more or less now than there was at the creation. A particle of water takes its departure from the surface of the sea, in order to fulfil certain important offices to the earth; and having executed the service which was assigned to it, returns to the bosom which it left. These remarks clearly indicate, that Paley was well acquainted with the discoveries, in vegetable chemistry, of his contemporary, the celebrated Priestley; whom he only survived a few months, and whose writings he more than once quotes in the progress of this work. "The characteristics of Priestley," said Sir Humphry Davy," were ardent zeal and the most unwearied industry : he possessed, in the highest degree, ingenuousness and the love of truth. Chemistry owes to him some of her most important instruments of research, and many of her most useful combinations; and no single person ever discovered so many new and curious substances." To Priestley belongs the discovery of vital air, or oxygen gas; which he, for he lived in the days of phlogiston, denominated dephlogisticated gas. He discovered that plants growing in the light, purify the atmosphere; he showed the error of the common conclusion, that plants are unwholesome when kept in a sitting room, for they add to its vital air; but that they should not be admitted into bed rooms, for in the dark they absorb vital air, and emit fixed air, which animals cannot breathe. Dr. Franklin," the Playmate of the Lightning," when he heard of these discoveries, thus expressed himself, in one of his excellent letters: "That the vegetable creation should restore the air which is spoiled by the animal part of it, looks like a rational system, and seems to be of a piece with the rest." "Thus fire purifies water all the world over; it purifies it by distillation, when it arises in vapours, and lets it fall in rain; and further still by filtration; and when keeping it fluid, it suffers that rain to percolate the earth." "I hope," he adds, "this will give some check to the rage for destroying trees that grow near houses, which has accompanied our late improvements in gardening, from an opinion of their being unwholesome." For Priestley's discoveries in vegetable chemistry, the Royal Society awarded him the Copley Medal; on the presentation of which the President, Sir John Copley, thus eloquently expressed himself:-"From these discoveries we are assured that no vegetable grows in vain; but from the oak of the forest to the meanest grass of the field, every individual plant is serviceable to mankind; if not always distinguished by some private virtue, yet making a part of the whole which cleanses and purifies our atmosphere. In this the fragrant rose and the deadly nightshade co-operate; nor are the herbage and the woods, in the most unpeopled regions, unprofitable to us, nor we to them, considering how constantly the winds convey to them our vitiated air, for our relief and their nourishment. And if ever these salutary gales rise to storms and hurricanes, let us still trace and revere the ways of a beneficent Being, who not fortuitously, but with design; not in wrath, but in mercy, thus shakes the water and the air together, to bury in the deep those putrid and pestilential effluvia, which the vegetables on the face of the earth had been insufficient to consume." Life of Priestley. Davy's Elements of Chem. Phil., p. 38. Life of Pringle, by Dr. Kippis. Franklin's Letters on Electricity, &c. Some have thought, that we have too much water upon the globe, the sea occupying above three quarters of its whole surface. But the expanse of ocean, immense as it is, may be no more than sufficient to fertilize the earth. Or independently of this reason, I know not why the sea may not have as good a right to its place as the land. It may proportionably support as many inhabitants; minister to as large an aggregate of enjoyment. The land only affords a habitable surface; the sea is habitable to a great depth. III. Of Fire, we have said that it dissolves. The only idea probably which this term raised in the reader's mind, was that of fire melting metals, resins, and some other substances, fluxing ores, running glass, and assisting us in many of our operations, chymical or culinary. Now these are only uses of an occasional kind, and give us a very imperfect notion of what fire does for us. The grand importance of this dissolving power, the great office indeed of fire in the economy of nature, is keeping things in a state of solution, that is to say, in a state of fluidity. Were it not for the presence of heat, or of a certain degree of it, all fluids would be frozen. The ocean itself would be a quarry of ice; universal nature stiff and dead. We see, therefore, that the elements bear not only a strict relation to the constitution of organized bodies, but a relation to each other. Water could not perform its office to the earth without air; nor exist, as water, without fire. IV. Of Light (whether we regard it as of the same substance with fire, or as a different substance), it is altogether superfluous to expatiate upon the use. No man disputes it. The observations, therefore, which I shall offer, respect that little which we seem to know of its constitution. Light travels from the sun at the rate of twelve millions of miles in a minute. Urged by such a velocity, with what force must its particles drive against (I will not say the eye, the tenderest of animal substances, but) every substance, animate or inanimate, which stands in its way! It might seem to be a force sufficient to shatter to atoms the hardest bodies. How then is this effect, the consequence of such prodigious velocity, guarded against? By a proportionable minuteness of the particles of which light is composed. It is impossible for the human mind to imagine to itself any thing so small as a particle of light. But this extreme exility, though difficult to conceive, it is easy to prove. A drop of tallow, expended in the wick of a farthing candle, shall send forth rays sufficient to fill a hemisphere of a mile diameter; and to fill it so full of these rays, that an aperture not larger than the pupil of an eye, wherever it be placed within the hemisphere, shall be sure to receive some of them. What floods of light are continually poured from the sun, we cannot estimate; but the immensity of the sphere which is filled with its particles, even if it reached no farther than the orbit of the earth, we can in some sort compute; and we have reason to believe that, throughout this whole region, the particles of light lie, in latitude at least, near to one another. The spissitude of the sun's rays at the earth is such, that the number which falls upon a burning-glass of an inch diameter is sufficient, when concentrated, to set wood on fire. The tenuity and the velocity of particles of light, as ascertained by separate observations, may be said to be proportioned to each other: both surpassing our utmost stretch of comprehension; but proportioned. And it is this proportion alone which converts a tremendous element into a welcome visitor. It has been observed to me by a learned friend, as having often struck his mind, that, if light had been made by a common artist, it would have been of one uniform colour: whereas, by its present composition, we have that variety of colours, which is of such infinite use to us for the distinguishing of objects; which adds so much to the beauty of the earth, and augments the stock of our innocent pleasures. With which may be joined another reflection, viz. that, considering light as compounded of rays of seven different colours (of which there can be no doubt, because it can be resolved into these rays by simply passing it through a prism), the constituent parts must be well mixed and blended together, to produce a fluid so clear and colourless, as a beam of light is, when received from the sun*. A thought is always suggested in the mind of the editor, when dwelling upon the phenomena of light, what a chaotic world ours would be without its vivifying pre sence. Its importance is not confined to the most obvious |