230 DR- CARUS ON THE KINGDOMS OF NATURE, 



now, during certain chemical processes, particles of water are changed 

 into earth ; and though Lavoisier has sufficiently refuted that opinion, 

 he has not demonstrated the impossibility of the decomposition of an 

 original fluid into water, air, and earth*. That M'ater is of the utmost 

 importance in the general formation of the earth, has been proved 

 beyond doubt by the excellent experiments of the immortal Werner ; 

 and we are justified in continuing still to believe in its importance to 

 the preservation and life of the planet, when we take into consideration 

 both its quantity and its continual motion. In regard to its quantity, 

 we find that of the sum total of the surface of the globe (9,000,000 

 square miles,) the water occupies nearly 6,500,000 and the land only 

 2,500,000t- The water is so deep also that several points of the sea 

 are unfathomable, although latterly it has been fathomed to a depth 

 amounting to 4600 feet. The motion of the water, on the other hand, 

 depends partly on gravitation, as in the running of rivers and streams ; 

 partly on the attraction of other planets, (viz. the sun and moon,) as 

 in its ebbing and flowing in the tides :f, and in its ascending and 

 descending between the earth and sky in the form of vapour, dew, 

 rain, snow, &c. Comparing animal with planetary life, we are there- 

 fore led to conclude, that as a homogeneous fluid, in continual circu- 

 lation, the blood, is the source in which all forms and reproductions 

 of the organism originate, so is water one of the members most 

 important to the life of the earth. This internal life of the fluid 

 becomes indeed more evident when we consider the individual forma- 

 tions of the solid to which it gives birth. The most striking illustration 

 of this is the process of crystallization, which exhibits a near approach 

 of the inorganic to the organic life ; for we cannot deny, even to the 

 crystal, a certain inward peculiar life at the moment of its formation. 

 The only difference between an organic body and a crystal is, that the 

 life of the latter, the principle of action and reaction, terminates as soon 

 as its formation is accomplished. One might be tempted to say that 

 the crystal lives only to form itself; for as soon as it is formed it 

 dies ; while true organisms, on the contrary, form themselves only in 

 order to live, and it is only when they are perfectly formed that their 

 life is truly and properly evident. But the formation of the ciystals, 

 as a process nearly allied to organic life, is not the only phaenomenon 

 remarkable in them. The very forms of the crystal are, in their approxi- 

 mation to the form of the organized being, well worthy of a closer at- 

 tention. We find in all earthy, as well as in many metallic or combus- 

 tible fossils, the purely geometrical form of the crystal, which, in pro- 

 portion as it is more compact, and presents a more limited coincidence 



• See the experiments of J. F. W. Otto's System in an Universal Hydro- 

 graphy of the Earth. Beriin, 1800. 



t See Kant's Physic. Geograph., edited by Rink, Pt. I. p. 61. 

 j See Otto's Universal Hydrography, p. 520 — 550. 



