UNIVERSALITY OF THE ATMOSPHERE.
It is only the girdling, encircling air that flows above and around all that makes the whole world kin. The carbonic acid with which to-day our breathing fills the air, to-morrow makes its way round the world. The date-trees that grow round the falls of the Nile will drink it in by their leaves; the cedars of Lebanon will take of it to add to their stature; the cocoa-nuts of Tahiti will grow rapidly upon it; and the palms and bananas of Japan will change it into flowers. The oxygen we are breathing was distilled for us some short time ago by the magnolias of the Susquehanna; the great trees that skirt the Orinoco and the Amazon, the giant rhododendrons of the Himalayas, contributed to it, and the roses and myrtles of Cashmere, the cinnamon-tree of Ceylon, and the forest, older than the Flood, buried deep in the heart of Africa, far behind the Mountains of the Moon. The rain we see descending was thawed for us out of the icebergs which have watched the polar star for ages; and the lotus-lilies have soaked up from the Nile, and exhaled as vapour, snows that rested on the summits of the Alps.—North-British Review.