230 DR. CARUS ON THE KINGDOMS OF NATURE, 
now, during certain chemical processes, particles of water are changed 
into earth; and though Lavoisier has sufficiently refuted that opinion, 
he: has not demonstrated the impossibility of the decomposition of an 
original fluid into water, air, and earth*. That water is of the utmost 
importance in the general formation of the earth, has been proved 
beyond doubt by the excellent experiments of the immortal Werner ; 
and we are justified in continuing still to believe in its importance to 
the preservation and life of the planet, when we take into consideration 
both its quantity and its continual motion. In regard to its quantity, 
we find that of the sum total of the surface of the globe (9,000,000 
square miles,) the water occupies nearly 6,500,000 and the land only 
2,500,000t. The water is so deep also that several points of the sea 
are unfathomable, although latterly it has been fathomed to a depth 
amounting to 4600 feet. The motion of the water, on the other hand, 
depends partly on gravitation, as in the running of rivers and streams ; 
partly on the attraction of other planets, (viz. the sun and moon,) as 
in its ebbing and flowing in the tides{, and in its ascending and 
descending between the earth and sky in the form of vapour, dew, 
rain, snow, &c. Comparing animal with planetary life, we are there- 
fore led to conclude, that as a homogeneous fluid, in continual circu- 
lation, the blood, is the source in which all forms and reproductions 
of the organism originate, so is water one of the members most 
important to the life of the earth. This internal life of the fluid 
becomes indeed more evident when we consider the individual forma- 
tions of the solid to which it gives birth. The most striking illustration 
of this is the process of crystallization, which exhibits a near approach 
of the inorganic to the organic life; for we cannot deny, even to the 
crystal, a certain inward peculiar life at the moment of its formation. 
The only difference between an organic body and a crystal is, that the 
life of the latter, the principle of action and reaction, terminates as soon 
as its formation is accomplished. One might be tempted to say that 
the erystal lives only to form itself; for as soon as it is formed it 
dies; while true organisms, on the contrary, form themselves only in 
order to live, and it is only when they are perfectly formed that their 
life is truly and properly evident. But the formation of the crystals, 
as a process nearly allied to organic life, is not the only phenomenon 
remarkable in them. The very forms of the crystal are, in their approxi- 
mation to the form of the organized being, well worthy of a closer at- 
tention. We find in all earthy, as well as in many metallic or combus- 
tible fossils, the purely geometrical form of the crystal, which, in pro- 
portion as it is more compact, and presents a more limited coincidence 
© See the experiments of J. F. W. Otto’s System in an Universal Hydro- 
graphy of the Earth. Berlin, 1800. 
¢ See Kant’s Physic. Geograph., edited by Rink, Pt. I. p. 61. 
. $ See Otto’s Universal Hydrography, p. 520-550. 
