642 
THE HARMONY OF CREATION. 
BY DR. S. CLEWIN GRIFFITH, M.D. 
(Continued from page 574.) 
NDISCIPLINED minds are apt to refer all unusual 
and occasional phenomena to local and accidental 
causes, and mistaking trivial and unimportant differences 
for essential distinctions, to ascribe to very different phy- 
sical agencies what are only various effects proceeding from 
the operations of a single principle. The tendency of 
science is the reverse. It ignores accident in Nature. It 
admits no contingencies. The great Architect of the uni- 
verse has appointed regular and uniform laws, which govern 
alike the celestial bodies, the earth which we inhabit, the 
beings which people it, and the vegetation with which it is 
clothed. 
The apparent irregularity in the operations of natural 
laws, simply proves our limited knowledge. The rising of 
the sun, and its infallible setting, are not more certain in 
the zature of things, than the atmospheric phenomena 
which occur daily. 
The laws which govern the air we breathe, and the water 
on which we float our trade to every part of the world, are 
not sufficiently understood to enable us to give a definite 
explanation of all the phenomena connected with the abso- 
lute necessity of the air retaining its freshness. We know 
that a deterioration of the air has been taking place for 
ages in every part of the world, that all animal life, while 
living upon and freshening itself with the air, returns to 
this fluid nothing but impurity, and that death with its 
putrefactive vapours are poisoning the atmosphere conti- 
nually. Yet we find the air to be pure, and without doubt 
it has retained its purity since the creation of Adam, 
wherever the atmospheric stream is allowed to roll its 
aérial billows, and mingle fresh supplies of this mobile ele- 
ment with that which has become vitiated. The air is 
supposed to have a depth considerably more than fifty 
miles; why is not this huge supply originally given for 
animated nature exhausted of its life-giving power ages 
ago, and by what means is the motion sustained which is 
observed to be perpetually conveyed to the atmospheric 
ocean ? + op 
If any one will take an aquarium, and place in it molluscs, 
annelids, star-fishes, and crustacea, and add water only, 
