316 CHANGES OF STATE. 



Mr. Darwin remarks, that if the immense seaweeds of 

 the Southern Ocean were removed by any cause,, the 

 whole fauna of these seas would be changed. 



We have seen that animals and vegetables are com- 

 posed principally of four elementary principles, oxygen, 

 hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. We have examined 

 the remarkable manner in which they pass from one 

 condition from one kingdom of nature into another. 

 The animal, perishing and dwindling by decomposition 

 into the most simple forms of matter, mingling with the 

 atmosphere as mere gas, gradually becomes part of the 

 growing plant, and by like changes vegetable organism 

 progresses onward to form a portion of the animal 

 structure. 



A plant exposed to the action of natural or artificial 

 decomposition passes into air, leaving but a few grains 

 of solid matter behind it. An animal, in like manner, 

 is gradually resolved into "thin air." Muscle, and 

 blood, and bones, having undergone the change, are 

 found to have escaped as gases, leaving only " a pinch 

 of dust," which belongs to the more stable mineral 

 world. Our dependency on the atmosphere is therefore 

 evident. We derive our substance from it we are, 

 after death, resolved again into it. We are really but 

 fleeting shadows. Animal and vegetable forms are little 

 more than consolidated masses of the atmosphere. The 

 sublime creations of the most gifted bard cannot rival 

 the beauty of this, the highest and the truest poetry of 

 science. Man has divined such changes by the unaided 

 powers of reason, arguing from the phenomena which 

 science reveals in unceasing action around him. The 

 Grecian sage's doubts of his own identity, were only an 

 extension of a great truth beyond the limits of our 

 reason. Romance and superstition resolve the spiritual 

 man into a visible form of extreme ethereality in the 

 spectral creations, " clothed in their own horror," by 

 which their reigns have been perpetuated. 



