140 TIL MICROSCOPE. Oct. 
Nature’s complex changes, are the production of imper- 
ishable combinations, He says “the laws of Nature 
which never fail, and to which all change is subordinate, 
appear such as to accomplish a gradual advance to love- 
her order, and more deeply seated rest.” 
Speaking of the changes possible to dust, he again 
writes: ‘For, through the phases of its transition and 
dissolution, there seems to be a continual effort to raise 
itself into a higher state; and a measured gain, through 
the fierce revulsion and slow renewal of the earth’s 
frame, in beauty, order, and permanence.”’ 
That one will often find within a crystal, some foreign 
inclusion that has a movement, and which may be even 
a liquid substance, isa well known fact. The importance 
of temperature, however, is not enough taken into con- 
sideration, and many fascinating phenomena are so lost. 
One day it was my good luck to become an owner of a 
beautiful coerulean blue sapphire—a gem of nine carats 
weight. It presented a wonderful combination of the 
lightest metal in the commercial world, with an invisible 
gas; which is so necessary and so patheticaily deficient 
in the average sleeping chamber. That two such won- 
derfully endowed substances should enter into an 
embrace which would evolve next to hardest, and next to 
the loveliest thing in the world, is astonishing. Because 
there happened to be a flaw within the crystalline con- 
fines of this gem, its value as a cabinet specimen was not 
the least bit impaired. 
One bright cold morning I happened to take the stone 
in hand, and for the first time saw a moving bubble 
inside the flaw. I was at that time hunting quartz crys- 
tals for bubbles, and this discovery pleased me very much. 
I made an immediate start for a friend, to show him my 
new treasure. But after a careful examination of the 
gem, even to the trial of polarized-light, not even a trace 
of a bubble conld be seen. 
