106 



crowns, flashes, sparks, and that it fulminates, bursts, 

 strikes, pierces, bums, inflames. 



By a gentle agitation, fire enlivens all organized 

 bodies, and conducts them by degrees to their perfect 

 growth. It foments the branch in the bud, the plant 

 in the grain, the embryo in the egg : it gives suitable 

 preparations to our food ; it subdues metals t our 

 use, over the formation of which it precides. By 

 that we are enabled to give matter all those forms 

 which our necessities or conveniences require. To 

 that we are indebted, in a particular manner, for that 

 transparent matter, which being stretched out into thin 

 leaves, or fashioned like tubes, vases, globes, lenses, 

 furnishes us with various instruments, and enriches us 

 with new eyes, which help us to discover the smallest 

 objects, and bring nigh to us the most remote. 



From the action of fire on. earth, sulphur, oils, and 

 salts, the various species of fermentations and mixtures 

 result, which are the objects of the researches of the 

 chymist, and the soul of the three kingdoms. Being 

 concentered by lenses or mirrors of every kind, it ac- 

 quires a strength greatly superior to that of the hottest 

 of our actual fires, and in an instant reduces green 

 wood to ashes, calcines stones, melts and vitrifies 

 metals. 



Being excited, collected, condensed, modified, ex- 

 tracted, directed, and applied by electrical machines, it 

 becomes the fruitful source of a thousand phenomena, 

 which art diversifies every day. Sometimes, when ex- 

 tracted from a globe of glass, it runs with an incon- 

 ceivable rapidity along an iron wire, and causes light 

 bodies, placed at a league distance from the globe, to 

 feel the impression of it. Applied by the same means 

 to paralytic limbs, it restores life and motion to them* 

 Being present in all parts of the atmosphere, it co^ 

 lects itself in stormy clouds, from whence it is again ex- 

 tracted by art ; and a Le Monnier, equal to the fa- 

 bulous Jupiter, holds the thunderbolt, and disposes 

 of it at his pleasure- It is likewise fire that commuai^ 



