MODERN CHEMISTRY. 439 



the atmosphere ; a quantity which Liebig states, but on less 

 assured grounds, to exceed the weight of all the plants and 

 strata of coal existing on the earth. The same method has 

 been largely and curiously applied to the ingredients of 

 animal and vegetable bodies, and to the parts of inorganic 

 nature on which they respectively depend ; with results very 

 interesting in the natural relations thus disclosed, and of 

 great practical utility to agriculture and other arts of life. 



A further circumstance, characteristic of modern Che- 

 mistry, is the great extension of what may fitly be called the 

 creative part of the science, forming one of the most emi- 

 nent attainments of physical enquiry. The refinements of 

 analysis, already noticed, are even less remarkable as proofs 

 of advancing knowledge, than are the multitudinous combi- 

 nations which the chemist obtains from the materials sub- 

 mitted to his hands. Creations, in one sense, we may venture 

 to call them; since a large proportion of the compounds 

 thus artificially formed have no actual prototypes, as far as 

 we know, in the world that surrounds us. They do not exist 

 elsewhere than in the laboratory or manufacture, where a 

 happy accident or happier skill has produced them. That 

 supreme dispensation of the Almighty, of which the term 

 Nature serves but as an humble exponent, has placed us 

 amidst matter in different forms lifeless and inorganic, or 

 organised into life, but equally committed to us to mould 

 into new combinations, serving to our uses or satisfying our 

 curiosity. Human invention, accident, or necessity have 

 from the earliest time created these combinations. They 

 become of far greater complexity and more refined use, as 

 science and civilisation proceed in their course.' The chemist 

 of our own day, though not without practical motives at a 

 time when all worldly interests are in a state of such intense 

 activity, has carried the labours and results of pure science 



