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Chap. 5.] Water raised by Steam—Vegetalle Kingdom.

We literally live in it, as in the spray of a fountain, but our perceptionsare too gross to detect it.

How simple is this mode of raising water, and yet how effective ! Howsilently does it Work, and yet how sure ! In its liquid state, water is tooheavy to be suspended in the firmament ; hence the Creator has madethis provision to attenuate its particles by heat. It then rises upwards ofits own accord—neither wheels nor cranks, pumps, pistons, pipes, noreven power is required to send them up, or to keep them there; and yetbillions of tons are rising every hour, and accumulating in masses sogreat as to baffle language to describe or thought to grasp. And, whatis equally remarkable, neither cisterns are required to contain, nor con-duits through which to convey them. The phenomenon teaches us howa heavier fluid may be suspended in a lighter one, and that the propositionof water being 800 times heavier than air, is only conditionally true—depending merely upon the state in which those fluids are ordinarilyexhibited to us. To increase our admiration, the salt water of the oceanis during the process of elevation distilled into fresh, thus furnishingamong other suggestions that by which navigators have often adopted tosustain life in the extremities of thirst.

Water is also continually being converted into vapor and urged intothe atmosphere by subterranean heat. Our planet may be considered,as indeed it was by the ancients, as a cauldron, in which steam is gene-rated by those fires whose flues are volcanos. Oceans of the liquid areincessantly but silently thrown up from this cause. But, as might beexpected, from the intricate arrangement of internal chambers and channelsof communication, steam must often accumulate in cavities until its elasticitydrives up the water that seals the passage to the surface. Hence boilingand thermal springs, and hence also the hot spouting springs of Iceland .According to Ölafsen, a Danish traveler, one of the Geysers exhibited ajet at one time 19 feet in diameter and 360 feet high!

Modern authors explain the phenomenon of earthquakes by the accu-mulation of steam in the bowels of the earth. Plutarch says the Stoicphilosophers did the same ; but long before Zeno appeared the opinionprevailed, and caused the epithet “ shaker of the earth” to be given toNeptune. The mechanical as well as Chemical operations going on withinthe earth, are wonderful in their nature and terrible in extent. Wellmight mythologists locate the Workshops of the gods there, and place theforges of Vulcan and the Cyclops at the base of volcanos.

Of contrivances for raising liquids, as developed in the Organization ofanimals, we took some notice in the second and third books. Most if notall of them may be considered modifications of bellows and piston pumps.In the vegetable kingdom, other devices, and such as are based on otherprinciples, are in active Operation. This portion of creation exhibits in astriking light the important pari which devices for raising water performin the Constitution of our globe. Every tree and every plant, from thetowering cedar of Lebanon , to the hyssop that springeth out of the wall,from the wide-spreading banyan to a wheaten straw or melon vine, is anatural pump, through whose tubes water is drawn from the earth orimbibed from the air.

There is something exceedingly pleasing and sublime in the contempla-tion of the growth of vegetables, the germination of seeds, appearance ofsprouts, development of stems, branches, leaves, buds, blossoms, flowers,and fruits—their variegated forms, dimensions, movements, colors, andodors. Some persons who have never turned their attention to this subjecttili the evening of their days, have been astonished at the wonders which