62 On the Zodiacal Light. 



" Mau himself might spring from ocean, 

 Prone down the skies the bellowing herds might bound. 

 Or from promiscuous earth the finny race and feathery tribes ascend."'* 



If these inferences are correct, it follows, that in all the 

 complicated series of existence, and in all the changes which 

 chemical and other agents produce upon matter, the hidden 

 principle of life has never been revealed. 



Even galvanism, which has almost imposed upon the cre- 

 dulity of science a suspicion that it possesses the power of 

 restoring the vital principle after it has left the clay, has been 

 found to exert only a mechanical action upon the inanimate 

 subject ; while it electrifies the muscles and limbs, and pro- 

 duces motion resembling life, yet life is not there, and the 

 hideous distortions it occasions, as if in mockery of human 

 wisdom, leave the body an example of the insufficiency of 

 matter to revivify itself, or to furnish any clue to the mystery 

 of its animation. 



Vegetable life is equally hidden from human sight. A 

 grain of sand cannot become a tree, though with other grains* 

 and other combinations it sustains the tree in verdure and 

 beauty. If men could obtain a knowledge of the mystery of 

 life, they might restore it when taken away — the fabulous 

 systems of the poets might return as reahties — groves might 

 wave in sudden luxuriance over the dreariest deserts — and 

 multitudes arise, as if by the magician's impulse, where soli- 

 tude and silence have hitherto held undisputed dominion.! 



Art. VII. — On the Zodiacal Light. 



(Communicated by David Leslie, New- York, March, 1828.) 



The Zodiacal light, generally ascribed to the sun's atmos- 

 phere, is nothing more than those beams of light, seen at 

 times to issue from the sun through the interstices of dense 



* Lucretius, 

 t The author appears not to have adverted to the fact that innumerable an- 

 imalculae are discovered by the microscope in and upon almost every thing, 

 and that therefore the apparent animation of inert matter may arise from the 

 adherence of these animalcules, whose origin is doubtless by the regular al- 

 though singular processes of life. — Ed. 



