488 THE CHEMISTRY OF CREATION. 



to be bedecked with silvery bubbles of air. On 

 this air being collected it proves to be pure 

 oxygen gas, derived beyond a doubt from the 

 decomposition of the dissolved carbonic acid of 

 the water. 



This is an exact type of the chemical pro- 

 cesses effected by plants upon the gas dissolved 

 in the ocean. It is true that they require a 

 peculiar constitution adapted to the peculiar 

 circumstances of their abode. But the mere 

 fact of their living in the water, and some of 

 them never coming into contact with the air at 

 all, does not affect their power to decompose 

 the carbonic acid of the surrounding medium. 

 They have been formed for their present posi- 

 tion, and are as active in the fulfilment of their 

 office as the waving grass or the leaf of the 

 forest. Carbonic acid is present in sea-water 

 in still larger quantities than in the air. In ten 

 thousand volumes of sea-water, six hundred and 

 twenty volumes of this gas have been found. 

 By taking a piece of a living sea- weed and pre- 

 serving it in a basin of sea-water, it will, by the 

 oxygen it gives out, keep the water sufficiently 

 fresh to enable various little marine insects to 

 live in it for some time. The singular plants, 

 called corallines, about which so many erro- 

 neous views have been entertained, on the sup- 

 position that they were animal in their nature, 



