104 THE METAMOEPHOSES OF MATTER, 



pelled to proclaim that ordinary and allotropic phosphorus, 

 elementarily considered, are one and the same. He has de- 

 vised the word ' allotropism' to designate the second aspect 

 which phosphorus and certain other elements may assume, 

 and having done this, not much, indeed, the man of real 

 science, humble as every votary of real science needs must be, 

 proclaims the rest a mystery. 



This casual notice and illustration of the mystery of allo- 

 tropism will suffice at the time being. The exemplifications 

 of this property are rare, after all. Most of the myriad 

 varieties of form and quality under which matter presents 

 itself to our senses are clearly traceable to results of combi- 

 nation. 



Matter is ever combining and recombining. Nothing cer- 

 tainly in this world, of the materials of which alone we have 

 full chemical cognisance, perpetually rests. Rather let us 

 say, nothing for an instant rests in all its parts. Even the 

 rocks slowly disintegrate and decay. They yield up their 

 elemental parts to other forms, assuming other states of com- 

 bination. But it is when contemplating the living beings of 

 the world, that the full grandeur of elemental combination 

 becomes apparent. To die is the destiny of all that lives or 

 shall live ; but death and dying, how shorn of the terrible are 

 the words when understood, as the philosopher alone can 

 understand them under the meaning of change of elemental 

 parts : the upspringing of new developments ! 



Out of four elements alone, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and 

 nitrogen, variously combined, the bulk of living beings, ani- 

 mal and vegetable, is made up ; though, in small proportions, 

 other elements are so widely diffused, and so invariable in 

 their localities of diffusion, that to regard them as casualties 

 would be highly unphilosophical. Thus iron is a constituent 

 of all blood : so is manganese. Phosphorus, that highly com- 

 bustible element and deadly poison, enters so largely into the 

 composition of animals, that from bones and certain animal 



