THE ATMOSPHERE. qj 



them dissolved in itself, or suspended in cisterns of clouds, and 

 throws them down again as rain or dew when they are required. 

 It bends the rays of the sun from their path, to give us the twi- 

 light of evening and of dawn ; it disperses and refracts their va- 

 rious tints to beautify the approach and the retreat of the orb of 

 day. But for the atmosphere, sunshine would burst on us and 

 fail us at once, and at once remove us from midnight darkness to 

 the blaze of noon. We should have no twihght to soften and 

 beautify the landscape ; no clouds to shade us from the scorching 

 heat, but the bald earth, as it revolved on its axis, would turn its 

 tanned and weakened front to the full and unmitigated rays of the 

 lord of day. It affords the gas which vivifies and warms our 

 frames, and receives into itself that which has been polluted by 

 use, and is thrown off as noxious. It feeds the flame of life ex- 

 actly as it does that of the fire — it is in both cases consumed, and 

 affords the food of consumption — in both cases it becomes com- 

 bined with charcoal, w^hich requires it for combustion, and is re- 

 moved by it when this is over." 



"It is only the girdling encircling air," says another philoso- 

 pher,* "that flows above and around all, that makes the whole 

 world kin. The carbonic acid with which to-day our breathing 

 fills the air, to-morrow seeks its way round the world. The date- 

 trees that grow round the falls of the Nile will drink it in by their 

 leaves ; the cedars of Lebanon will take of it to add to their stat- 

 ure ; the cocoa-nuts of Tahiti will grow rapidly upon it, and the 

 palms and bananas of Japan will change it into flowers. The 

 oxygen we are breathing was distilled for us some short time ago 

 by the magnolias of the Susquehanna, and the great trees that 

 skirt the Orinoco and the Amazon — the giant rhododendrons of 

 the Himalayas contributed to it, and the roses and myrtles of 

 Cashmere, the cinnamon-tree of Ceylon, and the forest older than 

 the flood, buried deep in the heart of Africa, far behind the Mount- 

 ains of the Moon. The rain we see descending was thawed for 

 us out of the icebergs w^hich have watched the polar star for ages, 

 and the lotus lilies have soaked up from the Nile, and exhaled as 

 vapor, snows that rested on the summits of the Alps." 



89. "The atmosphere," continues Maun, "which forms the outer 

 surface of the habitable world, is a vast reservoir, into which the 



* Vide North British Review. 



