So human beings exist in successive generations. One generation passeth away, and another cometh, and so the race lives on. While alike in their power of assimilation and reproduction, there is a wide difference between the vegetable and the animal. They have not the same organs, and do not subsist on the same food. The plant is constantly consuming carbonic acid, and giving out oxygen, while animals consume the oxygen, and restore to the atmosphere carbonic acid. The difference of their physical structure, and their different relations to inorganic matter, suggest a wide difference in the “bios” or life, that animates them. Just what that difference is, no one can tell. It is a question for which science furnishes no answer. In his physical organization man differs but little from the lower animals. In this he is brother to the beasts that perish, having the same nature, needs, and liabilities. If he is “fearfully and wonderfully made,” so are they; in agility and strength many of them far surpass him. His peculiarities of form and structure do not secure, and, it may be safely said, were not intended to secure physical superiority, but rather to fit the organization for the indwelling of the rational soul, that is his distinguishing characteristic.
PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY
Has been made the subject of much diligent research and study. Some facts respecting the physical elements and structure of the sun and planets have been ascertained with reasonable certainty, but much is still in doubt. Assuming that the essential properties of matter are the same everywhere, we may tell with assurance of what the sun and stars are made, provided all solar and stellar phenomena are explained by physical laws that are understood, and in operation around us. This has been done in part, but not so as to harmonize the views of all astronomers. Since the use of the spectroscope[5] results have been more satisfactory, and on some questions of much interest, conjecture and theory have given place to certainty. By the decomposition of sunbeams or pencils of solar light, the refracted rays show the presence of several distinct chemical elements. Finding by a qualitative analysis that there is iron, copper, zinc, nickel, sodium, and other terrestrial substances in the solar and stellar spectra, we know that they enter into the composition of those celestial bodies. But in what proportions or combinations they exist is not known.
METEOROLOGY AND AEROLITES.
Who has not seen a shooting star? For a moment the bright objects dart through greater or less spaces in the heavens, and then disappear. Those of inferior size give but little light, and are seldom seen unless the eye is, at the time, directed toward the space they traverse. Occasionally one flames out with such brilliancy as to light up, for a moment, the whole heavens. These are called meteors—a name quite proper for both classes, and only the very ignorant suppose any of them to be real stars. They come singly, two or three in an hour, or in showers, such as were witnessed in 1833. When of such size that they strike the earth before being consumed by their intense heat, they are aerolites, or meteoric stones. Great masses of these are found in different places, and show such a peculiar combination of their chemical elements as to distinguish them from all other stones; and mineralogists generally conclude they were not formed on the earth. Whence they come is not certainly known. That they were formed by an aggregation of their materials in our atmosphere seems incredible. Nor were they thrown off by some great convulsion, from the moon, with force sufficient to carry them beyond the attraction of that body. Perhaps most astronomers now believe, on what they think sufficient evidence, that the celestial spaces are occupied by innumerable small bodies moving round the sun, of whose nature and orbits nothing is certainly known. The earth, it is supposed, while making its annual circuit, must be constantly encountering them, and, as in passing rapidly through the upper region of the atmosphere they take fire and burn, the shooting star or meteor is simply the light of that flame. The mechanical production of heat, now well understood, shows why they burn. The rapid motion of the earth, especially if it be duplicated by that of the minute body striking through its atmosphere, would generate heat sufficient to quite consume the meteoroids; so that generally their solid substance is dissipated before they reach the ground. Sometimes the heated aerolite explodes when in such proximity to the earth that the fragments fall before they are consumed.
THE AURORA.
That most interesting atmospheric phenomena, the Aurora Borealis, though so familiar, has never been fully explained. It is rarely seen in equatorial latitudes, but increases in frequency and brightness as we go north, even to the arctic circle.
In this latitude all observers may at times notice two distinct forms of the aurora. The one, as we often see it, has a cloud-like appearance, with a soft radiance permeating it, and seems a vast, irregular patch of mellow light, ever changing, and at times showing a slightly reddish or purple tinge. It is more frequently seen near the northern horizon, having the form of a beautiful arch, the ends of the segment apparently resting on the horizon, and the middle, or crown, a few degrees above it. The other takes the form of streamers, reaching far up toward the zenith. Gently curved, like the celestial sphere on which they are projected, they are not stationary, but almost constantly in motion, but soon resuming their former position, spreading themselves out like immense flags, with their numerous silken folds, ever dancing, quivering, undulating, as if stirred by some gentle breeze, though all else seems in calm repose. To say that the phenomena are electrical, would, probably, not be the whole truth, though evidence is not wanting that the aurora is in some way connected with the electricity and magnetism of the earth and its atmosphere. Practical telegraphists testify that during a brilliant display of “northern lights” such strong, irregular currents of electricity pass along the wires that it is difficult to send a dispatch; at other times the currents are so strong that they can communicate without the battery.
There is, perhaps, about as much against the theory of a purely electrical origin, as in its favor, and, on the whole, we conclude that the Aurora Borealis is one of the things respecting which modern observations have suggested more difficulties than modern science is yet able to explain.