Elias Lewis Jr.

“ The play of forces and plasticity of structure which make it a toy in the laboratory, have changed the aspects of Nature, and modified the surface, as they have the distribution of life, upon a large portion of the globe. Rocks are broken by its expansive energy, but they are also crushed by its weight, and ground to dust in its irresistible motion. A sheet of ice a mile in thickness rests upon the bed, over which it moves with a pressure of more than 260,000 pounds for each square foot of surface, and many such as this covered the old glacier-regions through an unmeasured period of time. ”

“ We scarcely realize, perhaps we seldom consider, how much of the joy and value of existence depends upon the movement of beings, and the marvelous perfection of the means by which it is effected. Walking, swimming, and flying, are the means by which we traverse the three great highways of Nature—the land, the water, and the air. ”

“ But, if the life of the tree is continuous, its leaves—the organs of its growth—have their periods of decay, and are types of mortality. The life of man is likened to the "leaf that perishes." In an animal, the vital processes are carried on by a single set of organs, the impairment of which limits the period of its life. With the tree, decay of the organs is followed by constant renovation, and the foliage which covers it the present summer is as new and as young as that which adorned it a hundred or a thousand years ago. ”

“ But we may remember that serpents, no less than more attractive creatures, are important in Nature's economies. Their structure is a marvel of mechanical adaptation, less complicated, perhaps, but as perfect in every detail as is that of mammals and birds, and the mechanism which rolls the human eye is not more complete, and scarcely more wonderful, than that which moves the fangs of a viper. Perhaps, in the study of Nature, we should estimate objects by their fitness, rather than by their attractiveness or beauty. ”

“ Every sound, the faintest motion of the air, arrests attention. To man, the earthquake conveys the idea of unlimited danger." And Von Tschudi adds his testimony, that "no familiarity with earthquakes can blunt this feeling of insecurity. The traveller from the north of Europe waits with impatience to feel the movement of the earth, and with his own ear to listen to the subterranean sounds, but, soon as his wish is gratified, he is terror-stricken, and is prompted to seek safety in flight." Thus it is that physical phenomena aid in moulding the mental and moral character of a people. ”

“ The gigantic fields of ice which now cover both arctic and antarctic lands prove that, within areas more limited indeed than in former time, the glacial epoch still exists in its stern and sublime reality.
Whether we consider the facts of geology or those of astronomical computation, it seems evident that the growth and decline of the ice-sheet, and of the causes which produced it, have been in no sense cataclysmic or accidental, but secular; only after ages have passed are we enabled to realize, from the altered aspects of Nature, that a great change is in progress. ”

“ Stately, tree-like structures inextricably branched, and a multitudinous shrubbery, delicate in form, and crowned with brilliant perennial blossoms, constitute a world of life and beauty in the obscurities of the ocean, where the eye of man but rarely penetrates. ”

“ It has been declared that "organic life is a result of motion;" certain it is that motion is a condition of life. It appears in the endless manifestations of beauty and utility, in the world of living creatures of which ourselves are a part. The heavens are more beautiful when clouds are drifting, and the motions of animals give a charm to a landscape which disappears in the solitude of a desert. ”

“ How much of the poetry and literature of Europe would be intelligible to persons whose ideas had expanded only to the limits of a coral-island, who had never conceived of a surface of land above half a mile in breadth—of a slope higher than a beach, or of change in seasons beyond a variation in the prevalence of rain? ”

“ And Nature is profuse of these "frozen flowers." On mountains, and amid solitudes of the North unseen by man, she scatters them as she does those which waste their perfume in the desert. The delicate lace-like figures which follow the touch of frost on the window-pane are of the stellate type, but, being modified by disturbing influences, develop into gorgeous patterns. ”

“ Dana's work: "A coral-island, even in its best condition, is but a miserable place for human development, physical, mental, and moral. There is poetry in every feature, but the natives find this a poor substitute for the bread-fruit and yams of more favored lands. How many of the various arts of civilized life could exist in a land where shells are the only cutting instruments—fresh water barely enough for household purposes—no streams, nor mountains, nor hills? ”

“ Not only do they produce these exquisite arborescent forms, but they build gigantic structures with caverns, grottoes, and mighty arch-work, and raise rocky walls, which rival in extent and massive grandeur the noblest mountain scenery upon the land. Though these constructions proceed but slowly, yet in numbers that are inconceivable, and through ages that are incalculable these tiny beings have been engaged in the work of rock-manufacture, until they now rank with earthquakes, the rising and sinking of continents, and other stupendous agencies by which the crust of the globe has been shaped. ”

“ If the view of Darwin be correct, it is evident that the habit originated in the wild and undomesticated state of the species, and that, in destroying their disabled or wounded ones, they simply act out their instinct of self-preservation.
They get rid of those which might delay their flight or allure pursuit; and we may conclude that love of life and fear of danger, rather than any primal ferocity, develop and fix a habit which at first sight appears singular and unaccountably savage.
Animals in their wild state live in perpetual danger, and, we may add, in perpetual fear. ”

“ Sand covered the ground to the thickness of an inch."
It is easy to see that this more accurately describes a dust-storm than it does the movement of sand on our beaches. It is the fine material only which is thus swept through the air. The coarser sands are driven along the surface, and constitute the hills of the desert, and they are built up as similar ones are of the still coarser sands of our coast. Grain by grain they rise at the touch of the invisible architect. This is true not only of the great dunes, but of the smaller ones, or ripple-marks, which cover the surface of the sands. ”

“ It is that by which the extremities of animals seize and hold their position in the media in which they move. If a man were no heavier than the air, the movement of his limbs would avail him nothing. The earth is his fulcrum, as the air is that of the bird, and water that of the fish. Progression, therefore, implies gravity and the power of resistance, which gravity affords. A body which floats is carried along with the media in which it is; having lost its weight, it has lost its power of self-control. ”

“ The regions of Hudson Bay are sterile, not because the heat from the summer sun is not intense, but because they are covered with ice all the year. But for this the climate might be as genial as that of England. Ice and snow maintain steadily a temperature of 32°, no matter how hot the sun's rays may be, and a rock or piece of earth will become greatly heated, while a block of ice consumes the heat that falls upon it. The solar heat is, therefore, expended in breaking down the molecular structure of the ice, and must continue to do so until it disappears. ”

“ The pressure, indeed, may be enormous, and portions of the ice be liquefied by it, but the water which is "ice-cold" escapes through innumerable fissures, and the freezing-point is not lowered by the pressure, as it would be if the water of liquefaction did not escape. The constant flowing of a glacier necessitates unceasing supply, and its source is found accordingly in that zone of elevation where snows accumulate. The snow-fall of which the glacier is born implies vapor clouds and condensation, and equally evaporation, the proximity of a warm climate and expanse of ocean. ”

“ Hence many corals, when split vertically, show a coarse cellular structure. In the life-and-death process of the polypes, animal matters remain confined in the old cells.
As the coral masses increase in size, it is evident that there must have occurred a simultaneous increase in the number of polypes. This fact is the more interesting, when it is known that a great coral dome may have arisen from a few, or perhaps from a single parent individual. During the long period of its growth, reaching through thousands of years, how enormous is the number of builders of it that have lived and died! ”

“ FEW animals are more universally feared and detested than serpents. Their presence startles us, however inoffensive they may be. Nor can the gracefulness of their motion, or beauty of color, conquer the discontent we feel when we see them gliding in our path, or coiled and glistening in the sunshine, in which they delight. ”

“ The formation of a sand-dune seems a simple process, and it is surprising how small an object may be the nucleus of one, and indirectly of a series of them. A bush, or tuft of grass, or only a twig, as we have seen, raised above a level surface, breaks the force of the wind, and immediately the sand-grains, which are rolling along the surface, are arrested, and form a minute hillock on the windward side of the obstacle. This increases in size—the sand-grains, as before observed, are driven up its slope, and fall on the sheltered side. ”

“ Curves in the Wing of a Partridge in Flight.
The wings, when flexed and extended in flight, assume curved surfaces, which change at each instant and carve the air, as does the tail of the fish the water, into complex wave-lines; and such is the structure of the wing that these results are inevitable when it is put in motion. "The muscles, bones, ligaments, and feathers, are so adjusted with reference to each other that, if the wing is moved at all, it must move in the proper direction." The bird no more thinks of its motions in flying than we do of ours in walking ”

“ The air is made warmer when snow-flakes begin to form, and the temperature is higher than it would otherwise be while snowing continues. In this way the formation of ice and snow modifies and softens the temperature of arctic winters; and the blossoms which open with the spring-time are not more significant of milder airs than are those which are born of frost and vapor, and expand their petals to the winter's tempest. Snowflakes are stellate in form; the molecules of vapor in crystallizing aggregate in six-rayed figures, but in endless diversity of patterns. ”

“ The meadow rests upon a floor of gravel and sand. It varies in thickness from a few inches at the uplands to eight or ten feet near the beach, and is filled with the roots of grasses throughout. It has been formed by growth and accumulation at the surface, for the meadow-grasses thrive only at or near high-tide level where rainfall and sunshine can reach them. The increase of the meadow in thickness has, therefore, just kept pace with the deepening of the water, or in other words, with the sinking of the coast. ”

“ IN the vegetable world, limits of growth and life are strangely diversified. Multitudes of forms mature and perish in a few days or hours; while others, whose beginning was in a remote antiquity, have survived the habitual period of their kind, and still enjoy the luxuriance of their prime. Some species of unicellular plants are so minute that millions occur in the bulk of a cubic inch, and a flowering plant is described by Humboldt, which, when fully developed, is not more than three-tenths of an inch in height. ”

“ We often witness the fact that water will not freeze if in rapid motion, although it be much colder than the freezing-point; but in this case will freeze at the bottom where its motion is retarded, forming what is called "ground, or anchor ice." The sandy bottom beneath swiftly-flowing streams is sometimes frozen solid by radiation of its heat to the cold water flowing over it. But no ice will form at the bottom of a pond or lake if the water be at rest; it then forms upon the surface only. ”

“ If we hold in our hands two cubes of ice, their outer surfaces are exposed to the atmosphere, and, if it be warm enough, some liquefaction at the surfaces takes place, and they become moist. Now, if the cubes be brought together, two of the outer surfaces become inner ones, and the moisture, chilled to the temperature of the ice, freezes, and the two cubes become one mass. It is because the molecules of ice may be continually crowded into new positions that the mass may be changed in form without its continuity being broken. ”

“ The velocity of a glacier depends chiefly upon the angle of slope over which it moves. The hut of Huji moved 336 feet in a year. But the motion in different portions of a glacier is very unequal, slow at the margins and at the bottom where friction retards progress, but may attain a velocity of three feet or more in a day at its line of most rapid flow. It has been estimated that the ice-sheet which covered New England at its greatest development in the glacial age may not have advanced more than a foot in a week, a mile in a century. ”

“ The phenomenon of the snow-ball is here reproduced on a gigantic scale, differing in this: in the one case liquefaction is produced by pressure, in the other by solar heat. Gradually the under-layers become incipient glacier-ice.
Movement of the mass originates in its gravity, and the direction must be down the slope on which it lies. Many streams in this way blend into immense rivers of ice, often several hundred feet in depth. The snow when first consolidated is filled with air-bubbles, and is white and opaque. Its whiteness disappears by expulsion of the air-bubbles ”

“ Whether the central portions of the earth be fluid or not, it is quite certain that heat increases as we descend; and it is estimated by Sir Charles Lyell that the heat at a depth of 25 miles would be sufficient to melt granite, and at 34 miles to render fluid or incandescent every known substance. We have no means of knowing the condition of matter under the enormous pressure which prevails at a depth of 34 miles, and are most concerned with the fact that the heat of fusion exists at no very great depth beneath the surface. The earth's crust is, therefore, its cooled exterior. ”

“ Geology has not a more tangled skein than is presented in the structure of Long Island. There is evidence of minor oscillations, and pauses of movement, during which great clay deposits formed in depressions upon the surface, now deeply covered with drift or stratified sands, affording also some evidence that interglacial periods, perhaps of mild climate, occurred, but more observations and more facts are needed to justify a definite judgment on the subject. ”