EUCALYPTUS TREES. £ 119 
laws, draws us in deepest veneration to the power 
divine. That is true science ! 
. * As into tints of sevenfold ray 
Breaks soft the silvery shimmering white; 
As fade the sevenfold tints away, ; 
And all the rainbow melts in light; 
So from the Iris sportive call 
Each magic tint the eye to chain, 
And now let truth unite them all, 
And light its single stream regain,’’ 
—Bulwer Lytton, from Schiller. 
If a series of experiments with coloring principles 
from coal-tar and bituminous substances led to the 
invention of the brilliant aniline colors, and brought 
about an almost total change in many dye processes, 
how many new wonders may not be disclosed to tech- 
nology by the rapid strides of organic chemistry ? 
As is well-known, three or four chemic elements are 
only engaged in forming numberless organic com- 
pounds, by a slight increase or decrease or rearrange- 
ment of the atomic molecules, constructing, for in- 
stance, from these three or four elements, ever pres- 
ent and ever attainable, the deadly hydrocyanic acid, 
the terrible atropin, or the dreadful aconitin at one 
time ; or at another time, harmless ammonia com- 
binations universally used for culinary and other pur- 
poses of daily life. Our wood-tars, we may remem- 
ber, are left, as yet, almost unexamined as regards 
their chemic constitutents. Few of our timbers have 
been chemically analyzed ; few other of our vegetable 
products are as yet accurately tested. What an end- 
less expanse for exploration does organic chemistry 
thus offer us! We are called on, among a thousand 
things, to trace out similar mutual relation and coun- 
teraction of such extremely powerful plants as the 
