CHEMISTRY,
AS  AFFORDING EVIDENCE
                 0» THB
     WISDOM  OF  GOD.
BY iCNSFORDP.  YANDELL, M.  D.
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CHEMISTRY,   ?t<r£P A&^i
AS  AFFORDING  EVIDENCE
OF THE
WISDOM  OF  GOD.
AN INTRODUCTORY LECTURE
DELIVERED BEFORE THE MEDICAL CLASS OF TRANSXLVANIA UNIVERSITV,
  ON THE SEVENTH OF NOVEMBER, 1834.



BY  LUNSFORD P.  YANDELL, M. D.
       Professor of Chemistry and Pharmacy.
&
    LEXINGTON,  KY
PRINTED BY J. CLARKE & CO.
           1835. 
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                        Lexington, December 5th, 1834.

  °IR:  1° behalf of the Medical class, we, a committee appointed
for the purpose, tender you our thanks for the able Address deliv-
ered before us at the commencement of your present course of Lec-
ture.", and respectfully ask a copy for publication.
              Yours &c.
LUNSFORD P. YANDELL, M. D.
E. P. TALLEY,
H. N. EDMUNDS,
M. L. LINTON.
                        Lexington, December 6th, 1834.

  Gentlemen:-A copy of the  Lecture' which, in behalf of the
Medical  class, you have politely requested for  publication, is at
your disposal.  For this honor done me  by the class, please offer
them my grateful acknowledgments, and  accept for yourselves as-
surances of the respectful regard of
                       Yours &.c.
  Ifan E. P. TW,                 L' R YANDELL.
         H. N. Edmunds,
         M. L. Linton. 
CHEMISTRY,  &c.
  The circle of science has grown too wide to be compass-
ed by any human intellect  however great.  The  man who
knows the most will be free to admit that all his attainments
are limited and  humble, compared with  what he does not
know.   A single branch may afford  a field for the exercise
of the most vigorous faculties through the  longest life.  Ars
longa,  vita brevis, was the first aphorism of  the  Father
of medicine,  in  reference to his profession,  more than two
thousand years ago.   How  much more true is it of  the sci-
ence of the  present  day, enriched  by the discoveries of so
many successive ages!  The mind cannot embrace all, but
in the midst of a countless  multitude of studies must fix up-
on those which promise the  highest reward.  Goodness,  it
may be affirmed, is better than greatness;  purity is more ex-
cellent than power—virtue than knowledge.  As those evils
which touch  nothing but the  body or fortune, according  to
the fine sentiment of the heathen philosopher, are trivial in
comparison with those which affect the soul, so those  studies
are above all others  in value, which, while they strengthen
the mind, purify the affections, and  while  they store  it  with
knowledge, fortify it with just  and elevated principles.
   Among the branches of human knowledge which have
given efficiency  to labor,  and  multiplied  the  comforts and
decencies of  life, and which  at the  same time afford an
agreeable and invigorating exercise to the mind, Chemistry
holds a conspicuous  place.   It were easy  to show, that it is
connected with nearly every art in which the well-being of
society is concerned—that* every artizan or laborer, though
he may not be aware of it, is guided and profited by its light—
whether his occupation be agriculture, the parent and most use-
ful of all, or that of the hatter,painter, tanner, druggist, tallow- 
4
  chandler or soap-maker. But it is not my intention to go into
  this proof on the present occasion.   Leaving such details to
  be exhibited in the progress of our course, as they come up
  naturally in  their place, it is my purpose, in this discourse,
  to ascend to some of the higher results of the Science, and
  inquire how far its testimony is  favorable to the Wisdom of
  Him who is the author of its phenomena and laws.
    So extended is the field covered by chemistry, and so pro-
  lific every portion of it,of those arguments which bear upon our
  subject, that our trouble is, not to find them, but, out of the
  mass, to select the most appropriate.  Air, earth and water,
  as objects at once  familiar and extensive—so common  as to
  have formed  subjects of attention  and  some  study to the
  most listless observer, but so widely diffused, so potent and
  useful, that they  are not surpassed in dignity by any other
 department of inanimate creation—may be chosen as afford-
 ing, perhaps, the aptest illustrations—the earth, which forms
 the dwelling place of man, the air,  which he breathes, and
 water, which enters into both,  and imparts to them  their
 most exquisite finish and beauty.
   One of the most abundant substances of which chemistry
 treats, is atmospheric  air.  This fluid, it is  well known, is
 indispensable to the  existence of animals  and vegetables.
 All these, from the highest to the lowest, are possessed of a
 respiratory apparatus.  The zoophyte  and the plant are as
 dependent upon it  for life, as the eagle  which makes it his
 home.   The first act of the new-born  babe is to inhale the
 air, and the last effort of the  expiring  man to command its
 receding wave.  This fluid, surrounding the earth to the dis-
 tance of about fifty miles, the home of every thing that lives,
 the laboratory in which all the magnificent processes of na-
 ture go on, has been studied by the learned in every age.
 But it is within a short period only that light has been  shed
 upon its true constitution.  The most important element in it,
 namely, oxygen, was discovered  by Dr. Priestly, just sixty
years ago.  Nitrogen, the other element, had been discover-
ed by Rutherford two years before, but it was first separated 
5
from the atmosphere, and proved  to  be one of its constitu-
ents, by Lavoisier, after the discovery of oxygen by Priest-
ly.  These more  palpable truths having been so recently re-
vealed, it is not strange that there are still phenomena con-
nected with it which have eluded the researches  of the best
philosophers, and which fresh labors, and more extended an-
alyses are required to explain.
  But if we look into  its qualities, as adapted to the wants
of the beings which  respire it, maintaining its purity in the
midst of impurities, perpetually giving  up  a portion of its
elements, but retaining each in a state of perfect equilibrium
we shall find it a  perfect link in a  faultless chain.
  It is  the only fluid which could support the respiration of
animals.  No other combination of gases could  replace it.
Oxygen is  the vitalizing principle.  It  is to imbibe  it, that
animals  breathe.  It  imparts vitality to the blood, suffuses
the cheek with  the  ruddy  glow of health, and gives  elasti-
city and vigor to the frame.   Nitrogen is an inactive fluid,
and serves no  other purpose that  we can perceive, than to
dilute the oxygen.  But it  is the only diluent that can  be
employed.   Hydrogen may be  made temporarily  to take its
place, and an "atmosphere composed of oxygen and hydrogen,
may be respired by animals for a short time, and vegetables
might possibly grow in it; but derangement of the vital func-
tions would be the inevitable  consequence of its continued
respiration.  Animals  immersed in  it, after  a few hours be-
come stupid, as if exposed to  a narcotic influence.   Were
such an atmosphere substituted for the vital fluid which now
surrounds us, a universal sleep  would seize upon all animate
nature,  now so full of life and  motion.
  But not only so.  These gases, oxygen and hydrogen, form
a most explosive compound, which would take fire at every
contact with a burning body, and subject the individual ex-
piring it to  disastrous  accidents.   Fires in such an  atmos-
phere would be  unknown, but the first spark that was  kin-
dled, or the first stream of electricity that descended through
it  would light up a conflagration by which the earth would 
6
be shaken to its centre, and  the atmosphere condensed into
water. Of the various elementary bodies known to the chemist,
all capable of assuming the state  of vapor, oxygen and ni-
trogen are the only two, out of which an atmosphere answer-
ing all the demands  of the  living world could have been
formed. It is  then wisely constituted. The best materials were
employed in its formation.  But this is not all. The proportions
in which they are combined are precisely those which are re-
quired for the maintenance of life in full vigor, and for the na-
tural term.  If oxygen  abounded more, the principle of life
would be exhausted by the intensity of its action, as the flame
is soonest extinguished which burns with greatest fury.  The
machinery of the system would run on at a feverish pace, and
the frame would sink consumed before it bad reached maturity.
The life of man, extended now to three score years and ten,
would truly be narrowed  down to  a hand-breath.  Oxygen,
too stimulating  to be inhaled in its pure state, like the light
of the sun which we enjoy most when reflected from objects
which mitigate its splendor, has been wisely blunted by its
combination with nitrogen.
   But were the dilution carried farther, and the azote made to
predominate, which  now only corrects, a hebetude  as  that
from  the artificial  air  of  oxygen and  hydrogen would
fall upon the living  world, alike fatal and enduring.  The
system would languish  under the lack  of  its necessary stim-
ulus.  The  blood, no longer crimsoned by its wonted con-
tact with vital air,  would creep in a purple current along
lifeless tubes; the brain,  robbed of its needed stimulus, oxy-
genated blood,  would grow feeble and dull;  and mind would
no longer put forth its accustomed strength.  The wings of
the imagination would become powerless and tame; poetrv
would lose its inspiration; eloquence  would fail; and even
judgment, slow now in  its operations, moving with a cautious
and wary step, would lose the power to act.
   Thus whether we remove  either of its constituents, or va-
ry their proportions, whether we  exalt or reduce its tone, 
7
disorder and confusion are equally the result.   Thus, as for-
cibly expressed by the philosophical poet,
       From nature's chain, whatever link we strike,
       Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
  But this balance, so exquisite and so uniform, is warred upon
by every thing that breathes or burps, and but for a provis-
ion as  wise as its constitution is perfect, the air, pure, elas-
tic and invigorating at first, and pronounced, at its creation,
good, would long since have lost its purity, and become more
pestilent than the air of an infected city.
  How, amid all the disturbing forces which continually as-
sail  it—the countless fires, and myriads of animals which ab-
stract  its oxygen, and load  it  with another gas hostile to life
—is this balance maintained; the oxygen allowed neither to
diminish nor to increase,  to  predominate  nor fail, and the
carbonic acid gas,  evolved during every moment of time, and
over the whole face  of the  globe, checked, and restrained
within limits that render it harmless?  By what magic in-
fluence is  this beautiful  adjustment preserved, in the midst
 of  perpetual strife, and harmony made to triumph over the
 principles of discord?
   Carbonic acid is more  than twice as heavy as atmospheric
 air, and but for another law,  which controls the law of gravi-
 ty,  it  would settle  along  the surface of the earth, as water
 sinks  below oil, and thus  gradually lift up the atmosphere by
 its  increasing volume until  the poisonous flood had risen
 above the level of our heads; and the earth,  like the grotto
 at Naples, should  become  filled with a vapor destructive of
 life.
    Lavoisier, a brilliant name in the annals of chemistry, be-
 lieved, that the lighter gases do ascend to the top of the at-
 mosphere, and there taking fire  give  rise,  by undergoing
 combustion, to the aurora-borealis, and other phenomena.
 He was ignorant  of the beautiful law, discovered after his
  day,  upon which  the just equilibrium between the fluids in
  the atmosphere depends.  According to this law, the par-
  ticles of  each gas press only upon their fellows, offering 
8
  slight obstacles  to the motions of other gases.   Hence the
  two gases in the atmosphere readily permeate the interstices
  of each other.  The carbonic acid  though much heavier
  than the air, rises  readily  into it,  because the  particles of
  the  air rest upon each  other, and  are to  the acid, as if a
  vacuum existed  above iti'  And for the same reason, neither
  of the constituents of atmospheric  air can ever  accumulate
  in one  region, or be permanently diminished  in  another.
  The particles of oxygen rest upon other particles of the
  same fluid, and  the particles of  azote upon their fellows.
  And whenever, from any cause, oxygen is consumed, the ox-
 ygen of a neighboring region, little obstructed by the nitro-
 gen around, rushes in to fill the partial vacuum.   When ni-
 trogen is removed, other particles of  nitrogen hurry to sup-
 ply its  place.  In cities  where  numberless fires and  lurf^s
 are continually abstracting oxygen, there is a perpetual ten-
 dency to a loss of the equilibrium between the  fluids—to a
 deficiency of oxygen,  and an accumulation  of nitrogen, as
 well  as the other gas, carbonic  acid,  which is  evolved by-
 combustion and respiration.  But the  law just  mentioned
 counteracts this  tendency.   Oxygen  from  other regions—
 from  over the green fields of  the country, and the mountain
 tops,  pours in  perpetually to supply the waste;  while the
 carbonic acid ascends to a higher region, where fewer of its
 particles exist. On the summits of the highest mountains i t is
 found as prevalent, as in the air of the crowded  city.   And
 the aeronaut, at the point of his greatest ascension, has de-
 tected no diminution of this fluid.
  Another provision tends powerfully  to preserve the  equi-
 librium,—a provision strikingly evincive of the wisdom with
 which all that relates to our atmosphere has been arranged.
 Vegetables find in the carbonic acid which  animals evolve
their acceptable food.  They drink it up with avidity, liberat-
ing in a pure state the vital  principle, oxygen, and assimi-
lating the other principle, carbon, to  themselves.  In  this
way, the myriads of growing vegetables, the grass of the
fields  and the trees of the forest, contribute to restore the 
9
wasted oxygen.   Water also  absorbs carbonic acid,  thus
counteracting its  inordinate increase; and, like vegetables,
returns oxygen  in its place.
  By these means the  balance is maintained.  Nor, under
the operation of  these laws, can any deleterious agent re-
main long stationary in any  place.  The poison of the pes-
tilence floating  in the air, is gradually diffused  and rendered
powerless, by becoming diluted; and  an evil  which might
become settled, and thus desolate countries, is  transient and
partial under the  existing laws of nature.  The air can nev-
er become stagnant.  Its constituents,  we have seen, pene-
trate each other with facility, and are  continually changing
place* The particles gliding easily over one another currents
are forming at every moment—a wise provision, co-operating
with the other  powers to preserve the salubrity  of the at-
mosphere.  That portion  which is heated is  rarefied and
made lighter by another chemical law, and rises to a higher
point; while  the colder and heavier body from  above de-
scends to take  its  place.   The volume which rests at one
moment upon the earth, expanded by the reflected rays of the
sun, may be ascending the next to  the region of frost—to
return again  to the earth, as it grows  heavier by becoming
colder, and breathe among flowers on the warm plains below.
The wave which  floated to-day over an iceberg at the poles,
to-morrow may  be moving over the sunny plains of  the south;
and  the sultry air of the equator may be gliding at the same
time, over the loftier fields of air, to temper the inclemency
of northern skies.  Thus the great  aerial  ocean is never at
rest.  That which is heated rises, and  there is a rush, more
or less violent as the rarefaction is greater or less, to fill up
the vacuum.
  Hence winds, which truly may be called the spirit of the
atmosphere, to  which it owes its vitality and power, its pu-
rity and sweetness, its health and life-giving influence.  And
though the tempest, in its fell sweep, may  occasionally  dash
the towers  of man's strength to the ground, and whelm  him,
with his navies in ruin, winds are a part of that splendid ma- 
10
chinery by which the air is preserved untainted—of that
class  of fearful  remedies,  which the physician of the uni-
verse sometimes employs, to secure health to the great family
of man.
  Another quality of the  air, which displays wisdom and
design, is its capacity to transmit caloric.   It is one  of the
worst conductors of heat.   It carries heat, when not in mo-
tion, slowly and with difficulty from the body.   The tongue
placed upon a spoon or a knife blade, in a morning when the
thermometer is within  a few degrees of zero, adheres  to it
instantly by  freezing, because the metal, being a perfect
conductor, rapidly  abstracts its heat;  and the fingers are
quickly blistered by frozen mercury, for a similar reason—
it draws off their caloric more rapidly  than it can be gene-
rated.  Suppose the air were endowed with such conducting
powers?  Our warmest vestments would be a poor barrier
against it.  In spite of furs, and wool and  down, the heat of
the body would soon be exhausted, and the human race, at a
temperature above 32°, the freezing point of water, would
become extinct.  Now, man braves the most intense cold of
the polar winter, where mercury freezes in the open air, and
where the  arctic fox  alone of animals is seen abroad  after
sunset.   In motion, it is true, air does soon sink the  tempe-
rature of the body, because each new wave takes off a por-
tion of its heat.  But nature has wisely ordered that winds
rarely blow in winter, in the  coldest  climates; and  it has
clothed  the animals  of those regions with  furs and down,
which, confining the air in their  porous  textures,  become
the worst of all conductors.  Profiting by the indications of
nature, man has appropriated these admirable substances to
himself, and clad in such panoply, fearlessly commits himself
to the cold of the polar winter.
   Water is not less affluent,  than the element we have ex-
 amined, in facts evincive of divine wisdom.   It is most curi-
 ously made.   It consists of bases, which kindle the most in-
 tense flame at the moment of their union.  The antagonist
 and enemy of fire, every fire that blazes forms it.  Diffused 
11
every where, above the firmament and below it, it performs
an infinite variety of offices, for which, were a separate agent
necessary, the earth would be encumbered  by the multipli-
city of objects, standing in each other's  way.   We have
dwelt at some length upon the admirable  properties of at-
mospheric air.  But with all its lofty attributes, it is imper-
fect without the aid of water.  Deprive it of this, and what is
now the evening zephyr, or the refreshing sea-breeze, would
become the blasting sirocco, from which we should be glad to
escape by burying our  faces beneath the sand. But water is
always  present in it.   Wherever this fluid  exists, solid or li-
quid, evaporation goes on.  In winter,  as in summer, at the
poles as at the equator,  from the humid  earth,  and from
ice and snow, the invisible and silent vapor is continually
ascending.   The  Mediterranean gives up  more water in
this way, than it receives from all the great rivers that empty
into it.  Thus the  moisture  of  the  atmosphere can never
fail, and parched winds  traverse but a small portion of the
globe.
   But why is this vapor not  speedily condensed, like  that
 which issues from the  pipe of the steam engine, or the spout
 of the  coffee  pot,  and the atmosphere  at all times  clouded
 with precipitating moisture?  In this way, the  vapor indis-
 pensable to life would draw  a dark veil over the glories of
 the heavens,  and  fill the  earth with gloom.   But it is
 arranged that  sunshine and cheerfulness  shall  succeed  to
 cloud  and  storm.   In ascending, vapor combines with
 electricity,  whereby  its  particles become self-repellent,
 —for it  is  an ascertained  law, that bodies charged with
 the same electricity repel each other—they thus assume the
 form of vesicles; and these  constitute  cloud.  The clouds
 are  buoyant by virtue of their  electricity.  They are con-
 fined, by some agency not well understood, to a limited por-
 tion of the  atmosphere.  The  aeronaut  may  ascend into
 them, and after being lost  in darkness for a time, emerge
 from their  gloom  into the light  of  day.  And the traveller
 among mountain scenery is often presented with the sublime 
12
 spectacle  of the  storm raging at his (eet, while all around
 him and above him is sunshine and calm—a phenomenon thus
 happily alluded to by Goldsmith:
        " As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,
        Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm;
        Tho' round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
        Eternal sunshine settles on its head."
   The clouds float by virtue of their electricity, which pre-
 vents  their vesicles from collapsing.  But the earth charged
 with electricity in an opposite  state, attracts  them, and the
 storm  begins.  The electrical fluid flashes into the earth;
 the vesicles collapse, and  the  rains descend.  But the  bal-
 ance is restored again;  spots of azure break out in the troub-
 led sky, and the bow of hope and promise spans  the vault.
 Mountains thus stand, in every country,  as guardian giants
 to collect the showers, and disperse them over the vales con-
 signed  to their care.  More rain falling upon them numer-
 ous springs are formed; rivers there take their rise, and  fer-
 tility is borne upon their bosoms  to the distant plains below.
 But the whole beauty of the law has not yet been unfolded.
 Water, it is well known, comprises about three fourths of the
 globe,  and this vast surface  is the source of perpetual exha-
 lation.  What would be the result, were the water, thus sent
 up, to revert  immediately to the bosom  of the deep?  Bar-
 renness would spread over  the earth, and the race of ani-
 mals,  robbed  of sustenance, would die.  But witness  the
 provision.  The clouds  of the  ocean are charged with  the
 same electricity as  the ocean  itself, and consequently  are
 repelled by it.  The vesicular form of the vapor is maintain-
 ed, and the buoyant  clouds float over the  sea to the  most dis-
 tant shores, there to  be drawn down by hills and mountains,
 to spread fertility over the land—again to be gathered by
 the universal  slope to the parent ocean;  and thus to pursue
 the magnificent circle of changes, until the power which or-
 dered them shall bid them cease.
  Another interesting phenomenon, connected with the pre-
cipitation of atmospheric moisture.  All  have  seen the turn- 
13
bier of iced water suddenly covered with moisture on a warm
summer's day.  This is the vapor of the atmosphere condens-
ed  by  cold.  So  the  earth is cooled more  rapidly than the
air, when the sun has gone down, and becomes a condensing
body.  The dews descend.  But who has not been charmed
with that beautiful  provision made for the living world, as
he has walked abroad  in  the early spring morning, and be-
held each spire of grass, and every  leaf pendant and drip-
ping with the dews  of the night, while  the dry earth, which
needed it not, had imbibed but little  of the refreshing mois-
ture?  The living vegetables are better radiators  of heat—
they give up their caloric  more rapidly, than  the dry, hard
earth, and hence the dew is distilled more richly upon them;
The law is  as simple, as  the phenomenon is beautiful; and
in all this, how exquisite  is the adaptation of the cause to
the effect!
  Water is universal;  but it is the only beverage universally
relished—the best adapted to allay thirst.   It is more grate-
ful  to the sick man's palate, than the choicest wines.   The
first and the last  cry of the patient  parched with fever, is
for cold water.   The weary traveller, in a thirsty  land, fam-
ished and ready to  expire, would give  kingdoms  for a drop
of cold water.   Water is the emblem of purity.  The waters
were troubled to  heal the  sick at the pool of Siloam.  Next
to pure air, who does  not rank  cold, gushing, living water,
at the head of earthly comforts?  The most common, it is
the most necessary—the most precious, it is the most free, of
all  the goods of life.  Laws entail other property; water is
the property of all.  The covetous man adds acre to acre,
until his domain is measured by leagues; and the  ambitious
man conquers nation after nation, until his sceptre gives law
to a continent; while his  poor  subject commands him only
enough of mother earth to conceal  his ashes when he dies.
Not so water.   The  meanest slave  enjoys a competency of
it;  the proudest monarch  can  enjoy  no more.  A bountiful
Providence has made it free as the air, or as sunshine, and
sends his rain alike  upon the just and the unjust. 
14
    Water it has been stated evaporates perpetually at every
  temperature.   But  the evaporation is in the direct ratio of
  the heat; and hence in warm climates it is much more copious
  than in cold. It is most abundant in tropical countries, where
  it answers the beautiful end of mitigating the intense fervor
  of the sun—less copious at the poles, which have no heat to
  spare, and which would be impoverished, and made more in-
  hospitable, by the process.
    The mode of its descent differs equally in the two regions.
  At the poles, it  comes down in a gentle, almost  perpetual
  mist,  and warms the air by its condensation and fall.   If it
 fell thus in hot climates, the continual clouds  would check
 evaporation, and render the air intolerably sultry;  the rains
 falling slowly  would sink into the earth,  and vegetables by
 the excessive humidity would  rot before  they  ripened; and
 the face of the country in  such quarters would be converted
 into an extended marsh, exhaling every fetid and poisonous
 effluvium, a fit residence only for lizards and aquatic animals.
 But there it  descends in sudden, drenching showers, running
 rapidly away; the clouds soon dispersing, and the sun breaking
 out in power, to renew the process of evaporation,  dissipate
 the useless moisture,  and refresh and  cheer the inhabitants
 with an elastic atmosphere.
   The specific  gravity of water is precisely that which fits
 it for the  numerous offices  it must perform, in the  present
 constitution of  things.  As the result of it, it floats the seeds
 of vegetables to plant new colonies upon  remote  continents
 and islands, extending thus  the dominions of the living world.
 The ocean too is whitened  with the  sails of commerce- hu-
 man enterprise, and  the light of science are  extended to
 every quarter of the globe, and civilization and the ar^s are
 spread as  far as there are winds to waft or waves to roll them
 Fruitfulness is brought down from the mountains, and spread
 over vallies and plains for  the  use of the husbandman    \
home,  adapted to their forms, answering to  all  their want's
is furnished for the myriads of aquatic animals  which swim
upon its surface, or glide swiftly through its waves   Inci
:rease 
15
its density, as to that of quicksilver, for example, and ships of
iron with platinum for ballast alone could navigate it in safe-
ty.   Or make it lighter, and the light canoe would not float
upon it, and the splendid barque that now "walks the water
like a thing of life," would be engulphed and lost beneath its
waves.
  One of the most admirable  laws of water is, that it freezes.
This subserves a hundred most important purposes.  Water
gives out heat in freezing, and thus  in the coldest quarters
of the globe, as it is  congealed by frost,  it  is liberating
vast volumes of caloric, and the process of congelation is in
this way  counteracted,  and at last arrested, by the heat
which itself sets free.  Freezing is a warming process.  Every
fall of snow, it has been computed, imparts more heat to the
atmosphere than would be  afforded by the same quantity of
pulverized red hot glass.  But evaporation is a cooling pro-
cess.   Extended oceans spread their  bosoms to the  sun, in
equatorial  regions, and the vapor which they send up tempers
the fervor  of his vertical rays.  It is borne along to the north
by  the upper current in the air, and descending in the form
of sleet or snow, sets at liberty the  heat which it absorbed
in the south.   Thus by the same splendid operations which
cool the temples of the children of the sun, are the horrors of
the polar winter softened and made supportable.  The aurora-
borealis, the glory of northern climates, is also an effect of
the same arrangement.   The electricity which is transfered
thither in combination with  the vapor, descending with  the
caloric and accumulating upon the ice at the poles,   at last
breaks through the atmosphere into  the vacuum above, and
in hastening back towards the tropics gives out light to cheer
the long winter nights of those regions.
   Other advantages grow out of the congelation of water, and
the circumstances which attend this process. Most bodies grow
smaller as long as they continue to grow colder, contracting
when they freeze.   Water is of a smaller class which obey
 another law; a law fruitful in most beneficent consequences.
It expands in freezing; by which we see bottles holding it 
16
broken; tubes conducting it bursted; and the strongest metals
confining it  riven asunder.  Mark, then, the operation of
this law.  The earth, after receiving the rains of autumn, is
congealed by the winters frost.   The water in it being ex-
panded, the soil is pulverized, and made light, and prepared
for the roots of the  tender, growing vegetables in spring.
But more.   Ice, as a consequence of it,  forms  first on the
surface  of our rivers and  streams.  The intestine motion
which goes on in water when subjected to a  change of tem-
perature ceases at a particular point.   Cooled down to 40°
of Fah., it attains its maximum  density;  and as the cooling
proceeds, those particles which are reduced below this point
float upon the surface, being lighter, and finally  arriving at
32°, are frozen.  In the mean time the warmer water below
being heavier, remains at rest; its heat being in some degree
kept in by the covering of ice above.   Did  water continue
to grow heavier, as it became colder, until it arrived at the
freezing point, a cake of ice would form first at the bottoms
of our rivers; the whole of their waters would be reduced to
the point of freezing before  congelation began; and their
fish by affording a nucleus  would be among the  first objects
to be incarcerated by the hardening ice.  The cold of a few
nights would congeal deep rivers, and  the ice lying far be-
low, would not be softened by the returning suns  of summer.
The inhabitants of water would perish.   Coasts would cease
to afford,  as  now,  the most  genial climates and luxurious
homes.
  So much turns upon the simple  law,  that water grows
lighter before attaining the point of congelation, and expands
in freezing*
  Water freezes at the right temperature.  Alcohol has never
been frozen by the cold of the polar winter,  or by the most
intense freezing  mixture.   Suppose such was  the law of wat-
er.  We should indeed have frozen oceans no longer, and the
explorer of northern  seas would find a liquid  surface as far
as there were winds to propel his barque.  But  we should have
rains much colder than ice or snow,—rains that would sink 
17
the thermometer to zero—that  falling  upon the earth and
penetrating the soil, would chill it beyond what the heat of
returning summer could restore, and blight and destroy the
seeds and roots of all vegetation.
  But now, reduced to the temperature of 32°,it loses its liquid
form, gives its latent heat  to the ambient atmosphere,  and
descending as fleecy snow, throws around the earth a mantle
which shields it from the more intense degrees of cold.   For
snow is a very imperfect conductor of caloric.  The earth is
often little lower than 32°,—of the  temperature  merely of
ice—while the air is 50° below zero.
  But inconceivable disasters would  flow from its easier con-
gelation.  The  cold  of a night  might arrest  commerce—
the  wide ocean  would  be covered with  ice, our  springs
cease to run in winter, and a solid crust bind up  the earth
where now the plough of the husbandman finds a pulverized
and genial soil  ready to receive  the seeds of the future har-
vest.
   No common liquid undergoes ebullition at the same temper-
  ature with water. Ether boils at 98°, alcohol at 175°, mercury
at 650°,water at 212°. If it boiled at 98° with ether, we should
be frozen in  mid-summer, as we freeze water by the evapora-
tion, in other words, by the boiling, of ether under the exhaust-
ed receiver of the air pump. If it boiled, with alcohol at 175°,
still the earth and our bodies would be too much  cooled by
the rapid  evaporation;  while we should be forced  every day
to complain, with the Augustine Monks on the great St. Ber-
 nard, that the water could not be made hot enough to pre-
 pare our soup.  But if instead of boiling at these  reduced
 temperatures, it reached the point  at which mercury boils,
 before ebullition commenced,  it would disorganize and des-
 troy all materials of aliment, and become useless as a culina-
 ry agent.
   But, although the boiling point of water is so much below that
 of mercury,  its capacity for heat is about thirty times as great.
 Thirty times as much heat is necessary to raise water to 212°
 as to bring mercury up to that point, and consequently water is
                            3 
18
heated thirty times more slowly than that liquid.  In boiling,
water combines with much heat which  becomes latent, and
is not appreciated by the thermometer.—Ice in melting does
the same.   Hence the boiling of water, and  the melting of
ice, are processes which go on slowly.   Were the law other-
wise, and did not the great capacity of water  for caloric ex-
ist, when it became heated up to 212°, it would instantly flash
into steam, and no boiler, however powerful, would be able to
prevent an explosion. And in like manner ice would instantly
liquify, when it was raised to the temperature of 32°. Instead,
as  now, of softening gradually under the increasing heat of
spring, the accumulated snows of winter  would be melted by
the heat of a single day, and pour down from hills and mount-
ains in wide-wasting inundations.
  The science connected  with the freezing and liquifaction
of water,  its evaporation,  boiling, and  capacity for heat, is
curious and instructive beyond that of almost  any other  de-
partment of nature.  If I have  failed  to  make it clear in
these remarks, the consolation is left us, that the subject will
be resumed and treated at greater length, at a future period
of our course.  We  pass on toother properties of water.
  As a drink for animals and man, and for most common pur-
poses, it was necessary that water should be free from active
foreign ingredients.   But the ocean  abounds in salts, and for
the wisest of ends.  One  of them, the  ordinary condiment
of man, is indispensable to the comfort and the  very  exist-
ence of a  large  class of animals, deprived of which  their
bodily powers decline, and they droop and finally die of loath-
some diseases.   The immense store-house  provided in the
bosom of the deep can never be exhausted.  Water becomes
vapour and  rises.  The  sail, more  fixed in its nature,  re-
mains behind.   The cloud as it ascends  from  the surface of
the ocean  bears limpid,   tasteless water.   But there is this
further advantage in the   present constitution  of the  sea.
The countless rivers which disembogue  in it, bearing upon
their bosom, from cities and forests  every form of destructi-
ble matter, but for some counteracting principle would con- 
19
 vert its  waters into a mass  of putrefaction  more  pestilent
 than the Dead  Sea, diffusing stench and disease through-
 out the  whole extent of the atmosphere.  Salt is this anti-
 septic, v It resists  the tendency to putrefaction, and pre-
 serves its waves pure and untainted.  Thus the sea, perpetu-
 ally the  recipient of corruption, is perpetually giving  back
 to  the earth  and the atmosphere water free  from taint or
 adulteration.
   Another end is attained by this constitution.   The  ocean
 would freeze  but for the presence of its salts, and thus com-
 merce would  be compelled to fold her wings for half the year;
 the temperature  of maritime countries would be greatly re-
 duced; the dominions of frost would be extended, and steril-
 ity would gradually stretch its withering arms over  what are
 now the  fairest portions of the earth.—But its salts also con-
 fine the ocean to its bed, restrain its proud waves and appoint
 the limits beyond which they may not go.  If otherwise, its
 waters must have penetrated  and filled every  cavity of the
 earth, polluted all our springs, and, far, as now  when  wisely
 restrained, from being a blessing, have grown into a moment-
 ous evil.
  It has  been observed that but for the  presence of water in
 the  atmosphere  animals could not respire it, and we have
 seen that the  air is continually receiving moisture from every
 sea, and  river, and lake and humid surface, in every climate,
 and at every temperature.  But atmospherical air is equally
 indispensable  to  the perfection  of water.   Without  it,  it
 would be a less agreeable  beverage,  and an unfit dwelling
 for  its countless inhabitants.  Its fish would as speedily perish
 as if removed from their native element;  which may easily be
 shown by immersing them in recently boiled water, or  that
 which has been deprived of its air by the exhausted receiver.
Hence if a pond  be frozen over in winter its  fish die for the
 want of  the vital fluid;  and if an opening be  made  in the
ice  before  the catastrophe occurs  they  collect about it in
numbers, as the unfortunate human beings in the Black Hole
of Calcutta crowded  to  the  narrow window  of their ship, 
20
each struggling to gain a breath of refreshing air.  Hence
also the reason why these animals congregate about the rap-
ids in our streams,  where  the agitated water has imbibed
more copiously of the atmosphere—a fact well known to the
experienced angler.  And hence the cause of the long jour-
neys which certain tribes of fish perform, impelled by the
instinct for preserving their offspring, stemming the current
and leaping over cataracts  and dams, to deposite their  eggs
upon shallows and heaps of gravel as near as possible to the
Bource of the stream, where the water is most fully combined
with air.  And why other tribes again, inhabiting deep and
■till waters, commit their eggs to the care of aquatic plants,
which  by the influence of solar light constantly preserve the
water in a state of aeration;—movements which, while they
exhibit the unerring nature of instinct, impress forcibly up-
on us the wisdom with which water has been formed in ref-
erence to living beings.
  In a word, what offices does not water perform, or aid in
carrying forward?   It is the vehicle for electricity and odors,
and regales us with fragrance; the solvent of our aliments,
and thus enables us to taste; it refracts light in its passage
through the eye, and hence contributes to the perfection of
vision; it gives the deep blue to the vault  of the heavens,
and thus the glory of the firmameut; it imparts fluidity to the
blood, and  thus continues  the ever-ceaseless motion of the
vital current.  Plain and vulgar  as  it has become by long
familiarity, how rich in philosophy do we find it when closely
analysed—how wide and wonderful its agency in nature—
in all its phases how beautiful, and how full of proof of the
wisdom and beneficence of its Author!
  We have thus glanced at a few of the qualities of air and
water, and for all the ends of their creation, find them per-
fect—abounding in evidences of design, exhibiting contri-
vances so wise, and harmonies so exquisite, that in their full
light one would think the sturdiest  skepticism  must  yield
A hasty examination  into the most  prominent  chemical at-
tributes  of the earth will complete the plan of this discourse 
21
  It is plain that the earth was created as a dwelling place
for living beings—the two great races,  animals and vegeta-
bles;  the last and lower to minister to the comfort and hap-
piness of the higher. A being guided by wisdom and prompt-
ed by benevolence in the creation of the world would select
those elements most conducive to the enjoyment of his sentient
and rational creatures.   How far is it fitted to this purpose?
Could  better materials have been  employed or more judi-
ciously arranged?  Its physical configuration, the flattening
of its poles, its obliquity to the ecliptic, to which we owe the
delightful variety of the seasons, its  mountains and vallies
and its universal slope towards its oceans, forming the beds
of rivers and tracks for inland commerce, and for conduct-
ing the excess  of its  waters to the parent bed, all this  is
passed over, though abundant in proof of an agency equally
wise, powerful  and good,  as belonging  rather  to  physical
geography than  to chemistry.
  The solid crust of the globe  consists  principally  of sand,
clay and lime, long considered simple bodies, now treated  of
in books of chemistry as oxides of metals.  Out of no other
substances with which we are acquainted, could a world  so
perfect have been formed.   Clay is tenacious, insoluble and
retentive of moisture.   It  is the basis of every  good and
lasting soil, supporting the rich vegetable mould, and retain-
ing water and the food of plants  within their reach.  In a
soil destitute of clay, these principles sink through its porous
body, and recede beyond the roots of growing vegetables, and
for lack of nutriment they  languish and  die.   To the same
quality of  clay, we owe also our springs and wells of water,
for which it forms an  impermeable foundation, as with lime
and sand, the solid  bottoms of brooks and rivers.
  But silex qualifies the tenacity of clay, which if pure, the
tender roots of  vegetables  could not penetrate, nor  could
water follow them to supply the necessary moisture.   With
silex it is perfect, neither  too bibulous and dry, nor too re-
tentive of  water.  Into this compound, the nutritive princi-
ples of the soil easily subside—not hastily  to  descend too 
22
 deep, or be evaporated, as they  would in  sand—nor be re-
 tained to the detriment of the growing plant, as they would
 in a bed of clay.  When to this two-fold partnership we add
 lime, we have a soil  the most  favorable  to the growth of
 vegetables;—and this  is just the composition of the soil in
 the most fertile and favored regions of the earth.
   Of the fifty two elements known, about forty are metals,
 and contribute to the solid crust of the globe.  But an equal
 diffusion of these would be worse  than a useless expenditure.
 As they are constituted, it would be a source of infinite dis-
 order.  Accordingly we find that  they exist for the most part
 in small quantities, and being many of them virulent poisons,
 are so qualified in their native state as to be insoluble and
 harmless.  Copper and arsenic, and even gold and silver, if
 generally diffused through the earth, and in a state, to be dis-
 solved by water would mingle poison with all our drinks.
   But there is one metal, without which, society could never
 have become highly refined—art  could not have  acquired its
 efficiency,  nor science  its elevation—without which fields
 could not have been successfully  tilled, nor seas skilfully
 navigated.   This I need scarcely say, is iron—the cheap-
 est,  the most  valuable  of the class; diffused  more  widely
 than the races of men; blended with every  soil; piled up in
 mountain masses; entering into all the processes of life__the
 hardest, the toughest; naturally the plainest and  least showy,
 but susceptible of the highest lustre—which alone with the
 flint strikes fire—which, (the touching emblem of man's own
 social and dependent nature) when  broken  asunder  can be
 united again with its former strength; by which  the mariner
in the storm, in the darkness  of  night, and in the midst of
unknown seas, guides  his  struggling bark in safety to the
distant port;  and, to crown its radiant catalogue of virtues,
the only one  which, in  all  its forms, is  safe and friendly
to the economy of man—making one of  the constituents of
 his blood, and for his health "gushing in a thousand springs."
  In a point of view not yet presented, the light of chemistry 
23
is eminently instructive.  As we look around upon the world,
we see  that change is written upon all things earthly.
         "------Day follows night, and night
         The dying day; stars rise and set, and rise;
         Earth takes the example; tis revolution all."
Flowers blossom but to fade.   The  leaves  of summer fall
before the chilling winds of autumn.  But chemistry teaches
that what seems  annihilation in all this is but a change of
form, and that in following seasons the same elements, once
possessed of life, will be combined  anew, and bud and blos-
som in a renovated and more  perfect shape.   The race that
expires, having marked the circle appointed by the Creator,
prepares the bed in which a  new generation springs  up to
regale the air and the  earth with their beauty and their fra-
grance, and  then  give place  in  turn to other generations.
Chemistry teaches  that  the  dew-drop  that  glitters in the
sun, and the  passing cloud,  and the morning mist, very em-
blems of evanescence  and decay, though they vanish after
a little season yet are  not lost, but reappear  in another type
to endure as long as the moon and stars.  Every drop of wa-
ter that existed when the ocean was gathered into its place,
is in existence  now,  either  locked up in solid crystal, or
floating in the cloud or  mist, or concreted in the bodies of
animals or vegetables, or congealed into ice or snow, or flow-
ing in rivers, or piled up in the depths of the sea. Matter can-
not be destroyed unless by  that  power which gave it being.
Finite  power can but change its  form.   The fire which In
cheering the social hearth, seems burning to  destroy, is only
transforming matter into new shapes.  Thus the pit coal, the
remains, it may be, of the plants of an antediluvian world,
and which for thousands of years has retained the elements
of life locked up within it,  gives them out once  more  under
the influence of combustion.  Its carbon uniting with the
oxygen of the atmosphere, assumes an aerial form, and  its hy-
drogen combining with  the  same principle ascends  in the
form of invisible exhalation.   This stream of vapor is gradu-
 ally condensed into clouds and falls to the earth in fructify- 
                           24

 ing showers; and the carbonic acid  gas, by other chemical
 agencies is also brought  down  again, to hasten the growth
 of vegetables, enter into their systems, expand in their leaves,
 paint the gorgeous tints and go abroad in the aroma of their
 flowers.  What more beautiful than  such a series of chang-
 es?  The plants which adorned the  earth in its early fresh-
 ness, having  slumbered for ages  in  lifeless  masses of coal,
 again made active, and after warming in the fire, and cheer-
 ing in the brilliant gas-light, and, as  the generator of steam,
 setting a thousand wheels in motion  for the maintenance of
 our race,  recalled once more to the living  world,  to an ap-
 pointed place among kindred plants, until it shall be the will
 of Him who created them to call them to their last repose!
   In such a  survey  of  the great operations of nature, the
 mind is filled with wonder that  so extended a system should
 be so perfect in all its parts—that one mind should embrace
 all  its details, direct all  its movements,  and  pervade the
 whole with unbroken harmony.
  But this wonder grows,  when  by  aid of instruments we
 look into that world too  small  for the naked  eye, and find
 there schemes not less beneficent, and contrivances not less
 admirable, than mark the  higher departments of nature.
 The microscope reveals to us animals, full of life and motion,
 which to the  mite  are as the  size of the bee  is to that of
 the horse;  others, one hundred  of which would not exceed
the size of a single hair; and others, of a different  species,
ten thousand of which are not  larger than  a grain of sand.
The most  powerful glasses  unable  to follow nature farther,
discover only  points in motion gradually decreasing until they
become imperceptible to the view.   Yet these animalcules
enjoy every variety of motion; receive food,grow, and decay,
feel pleasure and pain, engage even in the business of murder-
ous war; and must therefore have organs  of digestion and
locomotion; absorbents for the waste and growth of their bod-
ies, and nerves to connect them with the world in which they
live. But our senses can carry us no farther, and we are left
to conjecture.   Its objects infinitely multiplied,  infinitely 
25
reduced in size, even the imagination  fails to compass.   No
limits can be affixed to that  world, the objects of which are
multiplied to an extent which in the poverty of language we
call infinite—in their number and size  beyond the power of
imagination to conceive.  But  the contrast has not yet been
fully exhibited.   Our earth seems vast.  Its population is al-
most beyond number.   Its mountains out-top the clouds. Its
multiplied objects, its countless phenomena, its curious  laws,
no  human genius has been found mighty  enough  to  com-
prehend and arrange.   But, besides our earth, belonging to
the solar system, astronomy informs us there  are six other
planets. One of  these, Jupiter, is twenty times larger than
our orb, requiring twelve of our years to perform his journey
round the sun.    The sun,  ninety millions of miles from us.,
is eight hundred  times as  far  from Saturn, and twice that
mighty  distance  from  Uranus.
   These orbs, with the sun, fill up  in  space, an area of five
thousand millions  of miles.  But this is  a small section of
the heavens.  The fixed stars  number not less than one hun-
dred  thousand,  the nearest one of  which is two hundred
 thousand times farther from us than the sun.  But it is sup-
 posed that the most powerful telescopes reveal only a few of
that host which  with emphasis has been  called countless—
 that the Milky Way may be a cluster of stars so distant, that
 their blended light makes  but a luminous  track in  the heav-
 ens.   These stars have all motions.   The)  have all a lumin-
 ous fluid, which, in character,  is like that of the sun.   A few
 of them, in  distant  ages,  have  shone out with uncommon
 6plendor, and then grown  dim,  as if some destructive con-
 flagration had swept over their surface.
   Now analogy points strongly  to the inference, that each
 one of these fixed stars,  mere shining poinis, or too distant
 to be viewed by  the naked eye, may be  a central sun, like
 ours, with planets revolving around it.  Each sun, with its
 planetary system, may occupy a space as great as that which
 belongs to ours,  and  thus have we  five thousand  million of
  miles of space multiplied  by  one hundred thousand.
                           4 
                            26
   But analogy permits us to go farther and suppose that this
 stupendous array ol systems, that our luminary, and tiie one
 hundred thousand other suns, which tell only by  their feeble
 glimmering the simple fact of their existence—that these are
 but planets of some common centre—some orb in the illimit-
 able regions of space ol  such  vast dimensions, that the sun
 of  our world bears no greater proportion to it, than does the
 smallest  satellite in our  system  to that  glorious orb.  And-
 these suns, with the. innumerable planets which attend them,
 may be the homes of  human beings constituted as we are—
 Si;one upon by  genial lights—enjoying the same magnificent
 prospect-—nnd exulting in the goodness of the same benefi-
 cent Creator.  By the side of such a multitude of systems, our
 world with all its splendid schemes, its wise and curious laws,
 and teeming  population, sinks  into insignificance.   It is no
 exaggeration to say with one of the most eloquent of living
 writers, "that the  glories  of an extended forest  would suifer
 no  more  from the fall of a  single leaf, than the glories of this
 extended universe   would  suifer, thougii the globe we tread?
 and all that it inhabit, were dissolved.'*
  But the mind which planned, is  mighty to preserve.  The
 hand which spans the  heavens,  stoops to clothe the lilly of
 the vallies.  A sparrow cannot fall  to the ground  without lis
 knowledge.  And the hiiirs are all numbered on the head of
 the meanest  pauper, who  would hardly attract  our passing
 notice in the  streets, and whose death-knell  would occasion
 no  more  sensation  among all the sons of men, or  a longer
 pause from their callings, than does the sound  of that clock
 which we scarcely  hear in  the round of daily business.
  Thus does the imposing  splendor of astronomy unite with
 the milder but not  less steady light of chemistry, in  reflect-
ing honor upon the  omniscient author of its laws; and thus
 as leaf after leaf in the volume of nature shall be turned over'
 as f^t after fact shall be added to the pyramid of science  until
its summit shall have reached the heavens—when every stream
shall have been traced out to its end, then will each tributa
 ry be found swelling the ocean of truth, and the voices of all 
                           27
will unite at last in one grand choru? of praise to Him. whose
works, whetiier above or  below, on a ^tale  t-iupenuuusly
great or infinitely small, exhibit an adjustment equally per-
fect, an  arrangement equally wise, and rebuilt- equally har-
monious.
   In this way does science improve  the temper of the mind
and  raise it from  grosst r objects to the contemplation of a
scheme  of things  all-perfect and beauiiful.  Thus intellect
supplies food to the affections, and the  mind, as itj expands
by the  increase of  knowledge, rises in dignity, aud grows
strong in virtue.
   The  view which  we  have  now  taken  of the scheme of
nature, as exhibited by  the science in  which it is m-ide my
business to lead your studies for the next few months, recom-
mends itself to us  not the  less,  by  impressing us with  senti-
ments of humility—aumility, in view of the exceeding  small-
ness of our highest  possible attainments, in comparison with
the  vast ocean which spreads out before us, and  which must
remain forever unexplored  and unknown, and in view c»f > ow
small an atom we form  amid  the myriads of human beings
in which we are  lost, even in  this  world,  and the still more
 countless  millions who probably  people  the  worlds  which
circulate in celestial space.  But it affords ground tor grati-
 tude also, that we were permitted to be the tenants of so fair
 a world; that winds and waves have been made to  labor tor
 our good; that s-ed-time and  harvest return at  the bidding
 o( lovely  seasons; that  water  and  air,  fire and earth are con-
 stituted to be sources of our ceaseless gratification;  that with
 senses so responsive to pleasure, we have been endowed with
 minds capable of holding  such large discourse with nature;
 that at every moment of our  restless history, in the vigor of
 manhood and in the weakness of infancy, amid suns and sys-
 tems, the  «mall speck  that we are, our footsteps h.^ve been
 watched with  parental kindness; and't'*.nt our happ.ness has-
 been studied  in ail  the plans  of this vast  Universe. 
 
 

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