December 24,1870.] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
505 
excess of filth, in the air we breathe, the water we drink, 
and the earth we live on. It was recently stated that 
Liverpool invites any disease that may be in the air, 
and that its foundations are tainted with disease. The 
town is about the most dangerous to live in of any in 
England, the rate of mortality being alarmingly high. 
Doubtless the shipping, the tramps, the emigrants are 
all dangerous at times to health, and there seem to be 
other and special centres of contamination and pollution 
in the chemical works, and the immense numbers of 
bricks burnt in clamps round the suburbs. I think I 
never smelt so many or such curious odours as around 
Liverpool. It seems as if King Sulphur had been shak¬ 
ing himself up, and his fumes almost stifle the breath of 
strangers. Add to all these the inevitable pollutions 
arising from work, traffic, life combustion, respiration, 
decomposition, all fouling great towns to the utmost of 
their capacity. We ourselves die daily, and, were our eyes 
set to a finer vision, we should see portions of every one 
of us in the apparently pure air of a room. 
Is it asked what all this has to do with the manufac¬ 
turing power of pimts ? It has everything to do with 
it. Plants are the cleanliest of all manufacturers, but 
we have seen that they are also shoddy merchants. 
More, they are chiefly this, they deal in pollution, and it 
is only through plants that the great problem of the 
day—“ What shall we do with our dirt ?”—can be 
solved. There, is no other mode of extinguishing dead 
matter but by its conversion into living substance, and 
plant manufacturers are alone equal to this stupendous 
undertaking. All other possible means have been tried 
and failed. We have sent our waste up into the air, 
and it has returned to us in fevers and pestilences. We 
have turned our streams of reeking sewage into rivers 
and seas until our great drinking cisterns have been 
poisoned at their sources. Then the more sensible cry 
arose, “To the land with your foul waste!” But the 
earth is tolerably full of graves already, and if we turn 
it into a great dry-earth closet or huge sewage-sponge, 
there is great danger that by-and-by it may revolve 
round the sun a fever-stricken world of pestilence and 
death. The antidote to pollution is living plants ; these 
absorb, transform, utilize, and annihilate it. They weave 
these elements of disease and death up into the very 
staff of life. It may be said that such manufacturers do 
not thrive in towns. The few there are refuse to grove. 
The remedy for this is, more of them. Send 100 brave 
soldiers against 10,000, and no courage or skill can save 
them from destruction. It is just so in their case; pol¬ 
lutions abound in all directions, and you send out against 
them a few ragged hosts of weakly trees. The chief 
remedy for the alarming death-rate is more trees around 
the suburbs, all the open spaces in the centre of the city 
filled with sweet flowers. Fight fever with the sweet 
incense of lovely flowers, annihilate it with the absorb¬ 
ing force of fever-consuming leaves. 
The balance of parties, or rather forces, in the atmo¬ 
sphere is in great danger of being upset. A tremendous 
run is made in these centres of life and hives of industry 
for oxygen. We neither live nor work without it. On 
the other hand, whole volumes of dead carbon and other 
pollutions are thrown into the atmosphere. An actual 
scarcity of the former, and an excess of the latter, means 
suffering or death to us all. How shall we rally to the 
defence of the atmospheric constitution? We have no 
choice of instruments, we have but one, but that is all- 
sufficient. Plants alone can drain the air of its excess 
of carbon, and return to it a pure stream of oxygen. 
Every leaf, stem, and flower is employed night and day 
in restoring the atmospheric balance to an equilibrium; 
and, upon the whole, they have done their work per¬ 
fectly. Here and there, and over large towns, there are 
certain changes,—an excess of foreign matter, dust, etc. 
in the air; but, as a whole, its constituent parts are 
the same. To rectify these partial changes which are 
so fatal to health, we must plant more extensively. 
Girdle each city round with a wide band of grand trees 
and green parks. Sentinel the streets with officers (sa¬ 
nitary trees) at regular distances, in green or golden 
uniform, that will rest not from their labours day or 
night, nor leave for an instant their posts of danger and 
of duty ; enwreathe the houses, homes, workshops, ware¬ 
houses, mills and factories with garlands of leaves and 
flowers; crowd the house-tops, window-sills, yards and 
areas with objects of beauty and fragrance; let flowers 
wave down to us a joy from every giddy garret, and 
send up a symbol of trustful hope from every deep dank 
cellar, untii they cover and gladden the earth as the 
“waters cover the channels of the sea.” 
Plants are the true patron saints of these hardworking 
utilitarian times. Their perfume is the best of all 
antidotes to all foul odours. Their life is a warfare with 
elements that would be death to us. They gladden, 
purify, and ennoble the highways and byways of life, 
providing for rich and poor, manufacturer and mill 
hand, prince and peasant alike, those grandest preserva¬ 
tives of health, a clean earth, pure air, and clear water. 
The ministrations of plants to man are constant. They 
never leave nor forsake us. They meet us on the thres¬ 
hold of life, they abide with us to the last. None are 
too poor to enjoy flowers, none so rich as to be able to 
dispense with them. Through plants we live, move, 
and have our being. They distil for us the breath of 
our life. They raise our water, they make our food. 
They provide our clothing, our medicine in sickness, 
our strength in manhood, our sweet interpreters in love, 
our solace in suffering, our transfigurators at death. 
Through the agency of plants the worlds of matter and 
of life are linked together, and the three kingdoms—th© 
vegetable, the animal, and the mineral—are united in 
bonds closer than those of holy matrimony. They 
clothe the invisible air, and the wondrous light, heat, 
chemical force, and energia of the sun with bodies of 
marvellous symmetry, beauty, sweetness, and glory. 
The Poet Laureate has said or sung that “ Nature 
slopes through darkness up to God.” As we try reve¬ 
rently to look through the mist that hides the life and 
the woi'k of plants from our eyes the veil of darkness is 
partially rent asunder, and we exclaim, as we catch a 
glimpse of the wisdom that plans, the goodness that 
guides, and the power that governs all, that Nature is, 
in deed and in truth, the outer fringe of the glorious 
garment of God. 
ON THE COMBINATIONS OF CARBONIC 
ANHYDRIDE WITH AMMONIA AND WATER. 
BY EDWARD DIVERS, M.D. 
[Continued from page 486.) 
Behaviour on Exposure .—Two clean lumps of the com¬ 
pact carbonate, the analysis of a sample of which is 
numbered XII. in the list given ante , p. 485, weigh¬ 
ing together 25 grams, were exposed for some weeks 
at a mean temperature of about 10° C., and then 
weighed. They were found to have lost nearly 11 grams 
in weight; they were opaque, but they still preserved 
their shape and size. They could be lightly handled 
without soiling the fingers, and squeezed pretty firmly 
without being crushed. They were found to be fully 
changed to their centre. Their loss corresponded to 
43 or 4-4 per cent. This nearly agrees with the cal¬ 
culated loss, which is about 42 per cent., if the amount 
of acid carbonate in the sample be approximately esti¬ 
mated by the quantity of water in it, according to the 
tables, ante , p. 485. The calculated loss by expo¬ 
sure of the carbonate formerly in commerce of the tor- 
mula (C0 3 ) 3 (0H 2 ) 2 (NH 3 ) 4 is only 33 per cent. A 
sample of commercial carbonate lost by 24 hours exp o- 
sure, according to Dalton, 50 per cent, of its. weight : 
| this makes it probable that it had the composition I find 
| the carbonate to have at present, for when free from any 
