place is left vacant an instant until the eggs are hatched, and the young ones old enough to take care of themselves. The male bird

THE POETRY OF CHEMISTRY.

them, that whether they looked upon the granite peaks, piercing the blue heavens with their hoary pinnacles; the wild sea with its midnight moans and summer laughter; the blue heavens, with its storms and starlight beauty; or the green earth, with its clustering woods and waving grasses, blossoming all over from pole to pole, with a garment of living verdure; still the same invisible forces were at work,weaving all things in a web of unity, and connecting the most incongruous things together.

When men woke up from barbarism and goes to the sea for fish, and when he has sat-night, and began to contemplate the beauty isfied his hunger hurries back and takes the of the world, they saw that amid the multiplace of the female, while she in turn goes plicity of colors and of forms, and in the in pursuit of food. Even when they are endless metamorphoses of things around changing places, they know how to manage it so as not to leave their eggs for a moment uncovered. When, for instance, the male comes back from fishing, he nestles close beside the female and gradually crowds her off the nest with such care as to cover the eggs completely with his feathers without exposing them to the air at all. In this way they guard their eggs against being stolen by the other females, which are so greedy to raise large families that they seize every chance to rob the surrounding nests. The royal penguin is exceedingly cunning in this sort of trick, and never loses an occasion that is offered. In this way it often happens that the brood of this bird, on growing up turns out to be of two or three different species, a sure proof that the parents were no honester than their neighbors.

It is not only interesting but instructive and even touching to watch from a little distance the life and movements of these brooding-places. You can then see the birds walking up and down the exterior path of public promenade in pairs, or even four, six, or eight together, looking very like officers promenading on a parade day. Then all at once, the whole brooding-place is in continuous commotion, a flock of the penguins come back from the sea and waddle rapidly along through the narrow paths, to greet their mates after this brief separation; another company are on the way to get food for themselves or to bring in provisions. At! the same time the cove is darkened by an immense cloud of albatrosses, that continually hover above the brooding-place, descending from their excursions or mounting into the air to go upon them. One can look at these birds for hours, and not grow weary of gazing, observing and wondering at their busy social life.-International.

Hence, in their mystic worship, and in the poetic utterances of their untamed heats, they pictured nature under symbols of the same thought, and representing the creative power which forever and ever transmits one form into another, and evokes from corruption and death, the creatures of a new creation. The story of the phenix is the story of the world, and as one form crumbles into ashes, another starts from its dust, to continue the chain of beauty, and push on the series of utilities.

"Where is the dust that has not been alive?
The spade, the plow, disturb our ancestors;
From human mold we reap our daily bread;
The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes,
And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons;
O'er devastation we blind revels keep;
Whole buried towns support the dancer's heel."

Of the sixty simple elements to which all the varieties of dead and living matter are reducible, some fifteen or twenty play the chief parts in the chemistry of the world. All the phenomena which take place around us, whether it be the upheaval of volcanic masses, or the floating of a gossamer in the summer air; the sweeping hurricane, which tears up forests by the roots, or the blushing promise of spring's first flowers; the forked lightning and the tramping thunder, which

shakes the heaven with deep pulsations, or deep appeared in obedience to the Creator's the golden belts upon the body of the bee, fiat, and the whole earth became a home of and the fairy song he chants among the flow-beauty in obedience to chemical law. The ers; the trickling of molten metals into the ceaseless play of the elements, and the mufissures of the earth, or the passage of an tations of the atoms had built up the whole idea through the brain of man; are depend- into one gorgeous scene of luxuriance; and ent upon the separation and recombination man was awakened into being to render the of various of these clementary principles, whole subservient to his wishes, and, by without the movements and metamorphoses tracing out the harmonies of the natural of which, the whole world would be a scene world, to arrive at a more exalted knowledge of darkness, desolation and death. Chemical of his Maker. laws operate upon the minute atoms of which The atom of charcoal which floated in the bodies are composed; and, as all the atoms corrupt atmosphere of the old volcanic ages of matter have a spherical or globular form, was absorbed in the leaf of a fern when the the attractions and repulsions of atomic par-valleys became green and luxuriant; and ticles exhibit a close analogy to the attrac- there, in its proper place, it received the suntions and repulsions of the worlds. It is light and the dew, aiding to fling back to possible, indeed, that there is but one at-heaven a reflection of heaven's gold, and at traction and one chemical law, and the phe- the same time, to build the tough fibre of the nomenon of an atom may be repeated in the dew-drop, in the bubble on the stream, and in the floating world. There is more poetry in the alembic and test tube, than the worldly dream about.

plant. That same atom was consigned to the tomb when the waters submerged the jungled valleys. It had lain there thousands of years, and a month since was brought into light again, imbedded in a block of coal If we trace back the history of our world It shall be consumed to warm our dwelling, into those remote eras of which the early cook our food, and make more cheerful and rocks are records, we shall discover that the ruddy the hearth whereon our children play; same chemical laws were operating then it shall combine with a portion of the invisiwhich control the changes of matter now. ble atmosphere, ascend upward as a curling At one period the earth was a huge mass of wreath to revel in a mazy dance up high in fiery fluid, which, radiating or throwing off the blue ether; shall reach earth again, and heat into space, gradually cooled and be- be entrapped in the embrace of a flower; came surrounded with a solid crust, entomb- shall live in velvet beauty on the check of ing within it a seething chaos of intensely an apricot; shall pass into the human body, heated materials, which now assert their ex-giving enjoyment to the palate, and health istence in the shock of an earthquake and to the blood; shall circulate in the delicate the awful outbreaks of volcanic fires. In latter ages, when the crust had cooled still more, and the atmosphere let fall its show ers, the still heated surface, hissing and roaring with the contact of the flood, was rent into enormous blocks and dreadful abysses which still remain all over the world, and form the wondrous monuments of an age of great convulsions. Later still, the seas gathered together, the rocky masses were powdered into dust by the delicate fingers of the dew and the shower, the green herbs sprang up, and the monsters of the slimy

tissues of the brain; and aid, by entering into some new combination, in educating the thoughts which are now being uttered by the pen. It is but an atom of charcoal; it may dwell one moment in a stagnant ditch, and the next be flushing on the lip of beauty; it may now be a component of a lime, stone rock, and then an ingredient in a field of potatoes; it may slumber a thousand years without undergoing a single change, and the next hour pass through a thousand; and, after all, it is only an atom of charcoal, and occupies only its place, wherever it may be.

It is from the unceasing interchange of the particles of matter, that the living lustre of the world is born, it is the separation of one

Spitzenbergen's ice and Afric's burning field
To Nature's living mass their tribute yield!"

No; there is more wonder in truth than

But there are revelations of this wonderworld of change more startling than these, and, perhaps, more truly poetic. The most obdurate and inflexible bodies seem destined by a law of their nature to work their way

atom of water from one atom of starch fable, and more poetry in fact than fiction. which gives rise to the formation of sugar, and to this change, produced by the mutual influences of warmth and moisture, the germination of all seeds is due, and hence the continuation of vegetation. Neither the oaks of the forest, nor the grasses of the field, could ever have burst into their green beau-up through successive orders of being, til ty but for this simple change in the elements of their seeds. The maltster takes advantage of this to produce that delicious flavor in the barley, which, when combined with the intoxicating product of a second change in the sugar itself, has proved the source of physic: 1 suffering and social misery to millions.

they reach the highest of them all; and when there, to fill a purpose essential to the very existence of man himself. Thus, without phosphorus, and sulphur, and potash, the human frame would be destitute of outline, and power of locomotion; for with these materials its bones are formed; so, also, without a supply of common salt, which is also a If the imaginings of the early world were startling and brilliant, the facts of modern compound of a brilliant metal and a poisonchemists are imbued with a poetry more lof-could not be maintained, and the flame ous gas, the alkaline character of the blood ty still, while they have for their basis the solid ground of truth, and stand separated by a wide gulf from the phantasies of fiction. What Oriental fiction of aerial temples or rainbow daughters of the sky, can for a moment be compared with the simple chemistry of the atmosphere, or the rainbows themselves? This soft, universal azure me

would soon fall into comuption and perish
and in like manner, without iron, the identi-
cal metal of which plow shares and steam
engines are formed, life could not be sustain-
ed even for the shortest space of time; for
of the blood, that fluid maintains its brillian-
by the
presence of that metal in the globules,
cy of color, and is enabled to take up the vi-

dium in which the round world swings, and which holds the seas in its arms, letting talizing atoms of the air, and so continue the them fall, drop by drop, in fatness to the still more wonderful, perhaps, are those disenjoyments of a happy existence. While earth, or that spanning archway of the angels, formed by millions of separate particles self immortal, and which reveal to us the coveries by which Liebig has rendered himof rain, each particle a prism, which cuts up chemical phenomena involved in the operathe rays of light into separate parts, and ex-tions of the brain, and which indicate tha plains their anatomy and their colors-we the amount of phosphorous and nitrogenous ask, what mere imagining or fancying of

man can equal the reality of the beauty and principles, removed continually from the nervous system, are in direct proportion to the intensity and continuance of thought and which point to the immediate relation of the material to the spiritual.

the glory thus surrounding us? What fable of old can stand side by side with the fact that

"Each drop of water is a world, containing
Creatures more numerous than the men of earth;
The April shower upon the green tree rai ing,
To fresh creations in each leaf give birth;
Kature, her balance every.where regaining,
New breathing things to form, leaves nothing
dearth;

Passing from these things to matters less directly associated with the phenomena of life, we find beauty still predominant, and poetry of the most lofty character the prominent idea. A dark surface absorbs more heat than a light one; at the same time it

vice of humanity, under the name of chloroform, which not only finds

"Tongues in trees, Books in the running brooks, sermons in stones." but travels up

radiates or parts with heat more rapidly than a light surface. The chemist exposes the backs of his hands to the noon-day sun, the one bare and the other covered with a black cloth. The uncovered hand will be at a temperature of from 85 to 90°, and the one covered at from 98 to 106. The black color absorbs about fifteen per cent, more heat than the white one, and yet the cover and measures the magnitude of those lamps ed hand is uninjured, while the other is of God; will deal with higher than physical scorched and blistered; in this way, although apparently in opposition to the result requir-with a moral law; securing for itself a nobler things, and learn to attach its sympathies

ed, has God provided for his children who dwell under the fierce heat of the southern

sun.

He has made them black, that they may live in harmony with the golden sunshine above them, and not as the objects of the white man's tyranny.

"Through the measureless fields, Where the silver moon and the comet wheels."

salvation than from the choke damp of a
the worship of organic compounds.
mine, and inheriting a purer religion than

Meantime, the elements wait on man, and combine to do him service; he has made matter subservient to his will, and in this conquest of the material over the immaterial the world reads the idea of its advancing humanity. The lesson is one which humbles, because it points to a dependance on God, and suggests that there are regions into which the mind will yet have to enter to learn its spiritual duties, and to connect them with its conquest of the world.-Repos

There is poetry in such facts as these; and when the human mind has achieved for itself a nobler inheritance of wisdom than it now possesses, and true genius takes the place of commercial craft, we shall find the poet and the painter combining to do honor to the men by whose labors these wonderful truths have been unfolded. The picture of Faraday turning a ray of light from its course by the|itory. power of a magnet, under the direction of his own poet-mind, will be looked upon with profound reverence, and the names of Davy, Liebig, Berzelius and Dumas, will adorn the poetic annals of generations now waiting to be born. The same scrutinizing power which detects sulphur in the atmosphere, and in this way accounts for the peculiar odor of the electric spark; which traces out the analogy between the same atmosphere and nitric acid; which discovers the method of converting old rags into sugar, and sawdust into bread; which detects the service of the humble moss in cleaving and crumbling the rugged rocks on which it chances to grow, by means of the oxalic acid which its roots contain; which observes the effect of sunlight in elaborating the juices of the fruits, and makes that same sunlight a paint

VULGARITY

We would guard the young against the use of every word that is not perfectly proper. Use no profane language—aliude to no sentence that would put to the blush the most sensitive. You know not the tendency of habitually using indecent and profane language. It may never be obliterated from your hearts. When you grow up, you will find at your tongues end some expressions which you would not use for any money. It was one you learned when you was quite young. By being careful, you will save yourself a great deal of mortification and sorrow. Good men have been taken sick and become delirious.

In these moments they have used the most vile and indecent language imaginable‐ When informed of it, after a restoration to

of pictures; which compounds a material which acts as an antidote to pain, and proves one of the greatest of auxiliaries in the ser-health, they had no idea of the pain they

had given their friends, and stated that they simplest thesis of nature, whether written on had learned and repeated these expressions the human constitution, or this earth, buildin childhood, and though years have passeded by the great Architect for our use. The since they had spoken a vile word, the early impressions in childhood had been indelibly stamped upon the heart. Think of this ye who are tempted to use improper language, and never disgrace yourselves,-London Lit.