THE MYSTERIOUS BALANCE. 
147 
atmosphere as a universal thing, and I call it a world, 
needing no aid for its continuance and the perfect adjust¬ 
ment of its balance of power from external things. I 
take a vessel of glass, a few pebbles, a few pieces of sand¬ 
stone rock, and a sufficiency of water, and to that I 
commit my fishes and insects, and say, “ There is your 
world; the order of nature is such, that you may 
henceforth live and die without human interference.” 
I say nothing here of the details of management; 
I am looking for instruction in the laws of life and 
death. 
The two requisites of animal life, food and air, must 
be generated in this world, or it ceases to instruct me; 
yet the water contains but little of each, and whence is 
its supply to come ? God has ordained such a wealth of 
organic forms, that wherever the conditions of life are 
found, life takes possession of the spot, whether it be 
the bottom of the ocean, the dripping roof of a cave, the 
expanse of the viewless air, or the mimic lake I call an 
aquarium. Forthwith the dead stones become alive with 
greenness, the glass walls assume the semblance of a 
meadow, the milky hue of the water disappears as the 
earthy particles it held in solution subside, and the light 
that streams through it takes a tint of greenness. There 
is an order of vegetation appointed to occupy such sites, 
and almost every non-metallic, and some metallic sub¬ 
stances too, become speedily coated with confervse, when 
their surfaces are kept moist a sufficient length of time. 
Were it not so, the inhabitants of my world must perish; 
and to prove the fact I try an experiment. I place 
some fishes in a clean vessel of w T ater, without pebbles 
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