THE RAW MATERIAL. 



CONTINUED FROM PAGE 62. 



It appears mysterious that water should expand as it loses heat, that 

 very power which ordinarily produces expansion. How can this 

 apparent contradiction of the axioni — that the eflfect is in proportion 

 to the cause — be explained? It is dependent on crystallization. 



When heat is abstracted from water at any temperature, the atoms 

 immediately approach each other. Heat and cohesion, are two an- 

 tagonistic powers. If one is weakened, the other immediately gains 

 force. If all the heat down to the neighborhood of the freezing 

 point, is abstracted from water, the cohesion then becomes so strong 

 as to tend to fix the atoms solidly in their places, and as they come 

 near each other, certain ends or sides of the different particles, have 

 stronger attractions for each other, than for any other portion, just 

 as a number of magnets set about upon a dish of water, will arrange 

 themselves after a certain form ; the north pole of one will always 

 attach itself to the south pole of another. This polarity of the at- 

 oms of water, arranges them in detached rows, or groups, with in- 

 tervening vacant spaces, so that, although the individual atoms are 

 nearer each other than they were before freezing, yet, in arranging 

 themselves, they have left so many vacant spaces, that the bulk of 

 the whole mass is increased. As each atom is infinitesimally small, 

 like an infinitely sharpened wedge, there is scarce a limit to their 

 power of expansion. By such a simple arrangement, even the 

 dreaded frosts of winter, are most active in preparing fruitful soil 

 for man. Thus does nature tune to harmony all the parts pf her 

 grand symphony. 



Water is taken up in great quantities by the air, especially in warm 

 weather. Millions of tuns daily leave the ocean, and, borne along 

 by the viewless winds, until condensed by colder airs, fall upon 

 the earth as rain, and as it flows back again through brooklet, creek 

 and river, to its ocean home, it goes laden with the spoils of conti- 

 nents, which it spreads over the floor of the sea. Every shower 

 that falls, transports the pulverulent and loosened soil, a part of 

 its way on its journey to the ocean. The matter dashed from the 

 hill side, in the muddy torrent formed by to-day's shower, may be 

 8 . (113) 



