EELATIONS OF TKEES TO THE ATMOSPHERE. 



I HAVE not much faith in the science of ignorant men ; 

 for the foundations of all knowledge are laid in books ; 

 and those only who have read and studied much can 

 possess any considerable store of wisdom. But there are 

 philosophers among laboring swains, whose quaint obser- 

 vations and solutions of nature's problems are sometimes 

 worthy of record. With these men of untutored genius 

 I have had considerable intercourse, and hence I oftener 

 quote them than the learned and distinguished, whom I 

 have rarely met. The ignorant, from want of knowledge, 

 are always theorists ; but genius affords its possessor, how 

 small soever his acquisitions, some glimpses of truth which 

 may be entirely hidden from the mere pedant in science. 

 My philosophic friend, a man of genius born to the 

 plough, entertained a theory in regard to the atmosphere, 

 which, though not strictly philosophical, is so ingenious 

 and suggestive that I have thought an account of it a 

 good introduction to this essay. 



My friend, when explaining his views, alluded to the 

 well-known fact that plants growing in an aquarium 

 keep the water supplied with atmospheric air not with 

 simple oxygen, but with oxygen chemically combined 

 with nitrogen by some vital process that takes place in 

 the leaves of plants. As the lungs of aninials decompose 

 the air which they inspire, and breathe out carbonic-acid 

 gas, plants in their turn decompose this deleterious gas, 

 and breathe out pure atmospheric air. His theory is 

 that the atmosphere is entirely the product of vegetation, 



