THE BEAUTIFUL LADDER. 8/ 
shower of jewels. Here are necklaces of rare 
brilliancy, and rings, brooches, and pendants, 
crosses and crescents, and all the forms that 
angles can make, beautified with crystal lines 
and set with all manner of precious stones. 
Truly here is an exhibition of the wonderful 
and beautiful that might hold enraptured an 
angel’s vision, and certainly is enough to excite 
every devout mind to warmest praise and 
thanksgiving. 
“ But beauty and wonder are not alone en¬ 
throned over diatomacean life. The hand that 
everywhere arrays Nature in glory and beauty 
drops with equal liberality the treasures of in¬ 
finite goodness. When our admiration is suf¬ 
ficiently satiated to allow any material research, 
the little diatom will be found to subserve a 
very important purpose in the economy of Na¬ 
ture. In almost all forms of vegetable life silica 
is an absolute essential of growth; especially is 
this true in the grasses, grains, and all endoge¬ 
nous trees, on which man’s life is so largely de¬ 
pendent. These orders of vegetation obtain 
the material for their outer covering from this 
mineral. But we find the silica massive in the 
hardest of rocks, quartz, and in many of the 
