BOOK OF NATURE LAID OPEN. 159 



surrounds our globe as with a garment/ gravitates to 

 its surface, enters into its pores, revolves with it in its 

 diurnal motion, and circles along with it in its annual 

 course. 



The Air is one of the most heterogeneous mix- 

 hires imaginable. " In it," says Goldsmith, " all the 

 bodies of the earth are continually sending up a part 

 of their substance by evaporation A thousand sub- 

 stances that escape all our senses we know to be 

 there; the powerful emanations of the loadstone, the 

 effluvia of electricity, the rays of light, and the in- 

 sinuations of fire." Such are the various substances 

 through which we move, and which we are conti- 

 nually taking in at every pore, and returning again 

 with imperceptible discharge. Yet, notwithstanding 

 the multitude of discordant particles of which the at- 

 mosphere is composed, it is made wonderfully ta 

 harmonize in point of utility ; and is wisely contrived, 

 admirably framed, and excellently constituted, for 

 the various purposes it was intended to perform, in 

 the world of nature and of art. 



That the air is a fluid is obvious, from its possess- 

 ing so many properties in common with other fluids; 

 yet, in one respect, it is wisely made to differ from 

 all others, being incapable of freezing by the greatest 

 degree of cold. Was it not for this singular quality 

 of the atmosphere, what dreadful effects must have 

 been the consequence. Life and animation must 

 long ago have ceased, before the frigid blasts of the 

 north, and when winter first shook his hoary locks,- 

 the great pulse of nature must have stood still, 



