PRACTICAL PAPERS—TEE ATMOSPHERE. 365 
dice in his mind against book farming, and induce him to read at 
least one good agricultural paper. If we can stimulate one farmer 
to thought and study, to better modes of culture, and higher con¬ 
ditions of farming, then may we well say that we have not lived 
in vain. 
THE ATMOSPHERE: A CONSERVATOR OF ANIMAL 
AND VEGETABLE LIFE. 
BY COL. W. H. CHASE, MADISON. 
[Written for State Agricultural Convention, February, 1874.] 
All men’s notions of nature have some foundation in human 
experience. This is the broad foundation on which intellectual 
structures ultimately rest. The notion of personal volition in 
nature had this basis. In the fury and serenity of natural pheno¬ 
mena, the savage saw the transcript of his own varying moods, and 
he accordingly ascribed these phenomena to beings of like pas¬ 
sions with himself. Thus the notion of causality—the assump¬ 
tion that natural things did not come by themselves, but had un¬ 
seen antecedents—lay at the root of even the savage’s interpreta¬ 
tion of nature. Out of this bias of the human mind to seek for 
the antecedents of phenomena, all science has sprung. 
The first sciences were those of observation, when the matter of 
thought was provided by man’s environment, and he had no 
notion of creating it himself. The apparent motion of sun and 
stars first drew toward them the questionings of the intellect, and 
accordingly astronomy was the first science developed. Slowly 
and with difficulty the notion of natural forces took root in the 
mind, its seeding being the actual observation by electric and 
magnetic attractions. Slowly and with difficulty the science of 
mechanics had to grow out of this notion, and slowly at last came 
the full appreciation of mechanical principles to the motions of 
the heavenly bodies. In presenting at this time a short treatise on 
the relation of the atmosphere to the animal and vegetable life 
around us, it may not be out of place to delineate in as concise 
language as possible, the different stages through which the earth 
