30 THE CHEMISTRY OF CREATION. 



may have its principal components expressed in 

 two words, oxygen and hydrogen. The num- 

 ber of the metals employed in the work and 

 service of man is equally small in comparison 

 with the number known to chemistry. Gold, 

 silver, iron, copper, zinc, lead, and tin being in 

 commonest use ; the larger number of metallic 

 substances being obtainable with so much diffi- 

 culty as to render them of little comparative 

 utility; and the metals on the whole, properly 

 so called, form but a very small part of the 

 crust of the globe. 



Thus while the forms in which material sub- 

 stances and organizations present themselves to 

 our notice, are of the most pleasing aspect and 

 unbounded variety, and though the bodies them- 

 selves possess the most opposite and dissimilar 

 properties, all are reducible to a comparatively 

 very small number of elements, or in other 

 words, ultimate constituents. The results of 

 this arrangement are very striking, How sur- 

 prising to find that a gas (carbonic acid), dif- 

 fused in fractional quantities even in the purest 

 air, in one of its principal constituents (carbon) 

 is one and the same with the solid material 

 composing the dense forests ! How wonderful 

 to learn that the millions of tons of wood con- 

 tained in some of the primeval forests of the 

 earth were actually in a great measure directly 



