WATER IN AGRICULTURE. 183 



experimentally, what has long been suspected, that 

 hydrogen gas is a metal, and capable of assuming 

 a solid form in alloys. Oxygen, by uniting with 

 this gaseous metal, rusts, oxidizes, or burns it, and 

 water is the rust or ashes. This strange metal, 

 hydrogenium, and its oxide, play an important part 

 in all the operations of nature. It is not alone con- 

 fined to the little ball of earth upon which we live, 

 but it exists in the stellar worlds above us, and in 

 those misty points of light, the nebulae, which have 

 so long puzzled and perplexed the astronomer and 

 men versed in the physical sciences. The recent 

 discoveries by means of the spectroscope have 

 proved that this element enters largely into the 

 unformed, chaotic masses of matter, moving in 

 space, of which the worlds are made. It is ready, 

 when the formative act is fully accomplished, of 

 taking its place in combination with oxygen, as 

 water, to aid in the sustentation of animal and 

 vegetable life upon spheres so far distant that our 

 imagination even cannot reach them. 



The distant worlds cannot pass from the hand of 

 the Supreme Architect, and be permitted to act 

 under fixed laws, corresponding with those of our 

 planet, until the combustion of the hydrogen which 

 envelops them has taken place, from which are 

 formed oceans and lakes and rivers. We have 

 reason to believe, indeed we have demonstrations 



