The experiments of M. Pasteur have demonstrated that oxygen and light are not essentials of life, as he developed life in the dark, in an atmosphere of carbonic acid.
New Light.
More recent discoveries verify the presence of this comparatively unappreciated constituent.
The process of induction has ever been a great mystery in electrical science. Magnetic currents are known to act upon bodies in close proximity without the intervention of a spark, and to indue such bodies with magnetic force. This action, called induction, has been supposed to be limited to short distances. This we believe to be erroneous. In order that the inductive process take place, it is only necessary to suppose some impulse to be superinduced upon some pervading medium. This medium we recognize in the static vito-magnetic constituent of the atmosphere. Magnetic or electrical induction is therefore nature's effort towards an equilibrium. Newly-discovered phenomena show that this process is carried on even at considerable distances. To Prof. Loomis of New Haven, Conn., we are indebted for experiments which illustrate this fact. These experiments show that magnetic communications may be made through ten miles of space without the intervention of visible means of conduction. The employment of wires is rendered unnecessary by reason of the presence of the vito-magnetic fluid which operates in restoring the disturbed equilibrium. Magnetic currents are therefore not essential to this phenomenon.
A wonderful exhibition of this power was recently observed at Rochester, N. Y. In a telephonic exhibition in this city, the musicians were located in Buffalo, sixty-eight miles distant. While Prof. Johnson was engaged in preparatory practice during the afternoon, the notes from Buffalo were distinctly heard at the same time, in a city business office, at some distance from the hall of exhibition. Yet the wire used by the Professor, and that employed in the private telephone, were at no point less than ten feet apart. The same phenomenon was observed during the progress of the exhibition in another locality, the two lines still being no nearer than ten feet to each other.
The Character and Virtue of this Element may not be Mistaken.
It is this vito-magnetic element, and not some other ingredient, that renders the atmosphere so sympathetic, and responsive, to the governing Force resident in the sun, and in the earth-core. The atmosphere thus not only furnishes the field of operation for the manifold Force, co-operating between the sun and earth, but is itself the medium and instrument of the operations.
The vito-magnetic power under its Protean forms, styled "Vital Forces," and "The Physical Forces," works in the atmosphere and is the source of nearly all its phenomena. It causes and directs movements in every province of nature. Nothing else has so intimate relations with animal and vegetable life and growth. It may be considered as constituting the inherent virtue of the atmosphere.
Among the varying manifestations in which this agent is disclosed to us, within and beyond the atmosphere, may be enumerated the following, viz.: 1, Linear lightning; 2, Ball lightning; 3, The flash with reverberations; 4, Heat lightning; 5, Aurora; 6, Frictional or mechanical; 7, Magnetic; 8, Vital; 9, St. Elmo's Fires; 10, The exaggerated wave which bears destruction in its pathway; 11, That disclosed by rain, hail, snow, and fog; 12, Sunlight, and sun-heat; 13, Static, or atmospheric; 14, Zodiacal light; 15, Corona, etc., etc.