RELATION BETWEEN ANIMATED FORMS AND THE ATMOSPHERE. jj 



sition of these effete atoms ; they undo what the animal system has done ; they release 

 the oxygen once more, and restore it to the air for the use of animals, and appropriate 

 the carbon to their own structures. From it they fashion their flowers, from it they 

 build up their stems or perfect their fruit, and prepare once more food for man. 



32. Thus do these carbonaceous atoms run through a cycle of change, passing from 

 animals to vegetables, and back again from vegetable to animal systems ; and the SUN, 

 to whom Nature has given the charge of these wonderful operations, from age to age 

 furnishes his unfading beams (Ap., 824). He sinks below the horizon at night, and re- 

 tires to the south in the winter, and performs his work by regulated and measured 

 steps. Even at the polar regions, where there is no morning, no noon, no evening, no 

 midnight, where there is no rising nor setting of a star, the great orb peers above the 

 horizon, " and under the influence of his midnight beams, trees and plants run through 

 the same series of changes in a few weeks, which they accomplish in months under 

 the purple skies of beautiful Italy." BERZELIUS. 



33. As, thus, we see the sun performing the office of a great life-giver, and know 

 that all his movements are accomplished by the operation of mechanical laws, as we 

 understand that all these multiplied motions are executed by the action of one attract- 

 ive force, it would seem as though Nature, on the great scale, called on us to recog- 

 nise the agency of mechanical laws in regulating the processes of life. 



34. The carbonaceous matter which has flowed through the heart of man as blood, 

 is transferred, by respiration, to the air, and aids in the formation of forest trees or 

 painted flowers. The Asiatics, with whom have originated all the varieties of pagan 

 creeds that have spread to any extent in the world, believed in a transmigration of 

 souls ; they would have been much nearer the truth had they believed in a transmigra- 

 tion of bodies. The coal that we burn is the remains of forests which, in former ages, 

 were thronged with living things forests that sprang, as do the trees with us, from 

 gases that were formed from the respiration of animals but of animals that are all extinct. 



35. Atmospheric air is, then, the grand receptacle from which all living things spring, 

 and to which they all return. It is the cradle of vegetable, and the coffin of animal 

 life. Made up, as it is, of atoms that have once lived, that have run through innumer- 

 able cycles of change, the aspect of purity it presents conceals too well its history. In 

 its ethereal expanse are crowds of atomic forms that have once blossomed as flowers, 

 or participated in the pleasures and pains of animal life. Their former function dis- 

 charged, these atoms that are dead await their turn of reorganization once more. 

 They occupy themselves in transmitting the many-coloured beams of light, or moving 

 in vibration to the tones of music. A condition so tranquil suits well their former state 

 and future destiny. The remains of wild beasts, or of more ferocious men, disappear 

 in this general tomb of dying atoms, and after a time are reorganized by the solar 

 beams once more, perhaps in those pensive wild flowers that blossom unseen in the 

 gloomy wastes of an American forest. 



36. We know that the daily rotation of our earth on her axis determines periodic 

 observances in the functions of organized beings, and fixes their times of activity and 

 sleep ; a similar result attends upon her yearly motion in her orbit. How is it that, in 

 our latitudes, trees and plants awake at the coming of spring, and put forth their leaves 



