with Chemistry and the Natural Sciences. 325 



The importance of working minerals containing silver, without 

 the aid of mercury, will be easily appreciated, when it is known 

 that the registers of the mint of Potosi bear witness that between 

 285 and 286 millions of marcs of silver have been struck from 

 the year 1570 to the year 1800, and that in the preparation of 

 this enormous sum 286 millions of pounds of mercury have 

 been lost, which, at the present price, represent a capital of 

 L. 62,500,000. This immense quantity of quicksilver, used at 

 Potosi alone, is now in the bed of the Pilcomayor, a river of 

 Peru, into which flows all the refuse and rubbish of the silver 

 mine. What a mine of mercury is this same, so soon as art 

 shall have devised means for its easy and economical recovery. 



In the rapid exposition we have now presented of the rela- 

 tions which exist between natural philosophy, chemistry, and the 

 different branches of natural history, we imagine we have 

 brought together a suflicient number of facts to demonstrate the 

 necessity which now exists of drawing closer the links which 

 unite those several sciences. 



The powers which regulate organic nature have assuredly a 

 mode of action which is peculiar to them ; but, notwithstanding, 

 they are not so independent of those which preside over the for- 

 mation of inorganic compounds, that these latter do not exercise 

 a certain influence over the others. It is by carefully collecting 

 and analyzing all the effects which flow from the concurrence of 

 these two very distinct kind of powers, that we shall succeed in 

 throwing additional light upon the phenomena of life. 



One of our illustrious colleagues, in demonstrating some little 

 time ago, before the national tribunal, the necessity of extend- 

 ing the course of scientific study, has been the interpreter of the 

 wants of our time ; for if literary pursuits improve the moral 

 sense, by elevating the imagination at the recollection of noble 

 deeds, and develope the mental faculties, and supply the mind 

 ■with a store of images which may afterwards contribute to en- 

 rich our thought, what influence may not the sciences also, as a 

 whole, exercise upon civilization, those especially which have 

 such a powerful influence upon physical pursuits, which improve 

 the judgment, and reveal to man the secrets of creation, enlarge 

 the range of his ideas, and fill him with admiration at all the 

 ■marvels of those laws and principles he is seeking to discover. 



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