Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 1 (1837).djvu/242

230 now, during certain chemical processes, particles of water are changed into earth; and though Lavoisier has sufficiently refuted that opinion, he has not demonstrated the impossibility of the decomposition of an original fluid into water, air, and earth. That water is of the utmost importance in the general formation of the earth, has been proved beyond doubt by the excellent experiments of the immortal Werner; and we are justified in continuing still to believe in its importance to the preservation and life of the planet, when we take into consideration both its quantity and its continual motion. In regard to its quantity, we find that of the sum total of the surface of the globe (9,000,000 square miles,) the water occupies nearly 6,500,000 and the land only 2,500,000. The water is so deep also that several points of the sea are unfathomable, although latterly it has been fathomed to a depth amounting to 4600 feet. The motion of the water, on the other hand, depends partly on gravitation, as in the running of rivers and streams; partly on the attraction of other planets, (viz. the sun and moon,) as in its ebbing and flowing in the tides, and in its ascending and descending between the earth and sky in the form of vapour, dew, rain, snow, &c. Comparing animal with planetary life, we are therefore led to conclude, that as a homogeneous fluid, in continual circulation, the blood, is the source in which all forms and reproductions of the organism originate, so is water one of the members most important to the life of the earth. This internal life of the fluid becomes indeed more evident when we consider the individual formations of the solid to which it gives birth. The most striking illustration of this is the process of crystallization, which exhibits a near approach of the inorganic to the organic life; for we cannot deny, even to the crystal, a certain inward peculiar life at the moment of its formation. The only difference between an organic body and a crystal is, that the life of the latter, the principle of action and reaction, terminates as soon as its formation is accomplished. One might be tempted to say that the crystal lives only to form itself; for as soon as it is formed it dies; while true organisms, on the contrary, form themselves only in order to live, and it is only when they are perfectly formed that their life is truly and properly evident. But the formation of the crystals, as a process nearly allied to organic life, is not the only phænomenon remarkable in them. The very forms of the crystal are, in their approximation to the form of the organized being, well worthy of a closer attention. We find in all earthy, as well as in many metallic or combustible fossils, the purely geometrical form of the crystal, which, in proportion as it is more compact, and presents a more limited coincidence