It is therefore at any rate very probable that electricity has its appointed and important purposes in the economy of the atmosphere. And this being so, we may see a use in the thunder-storm and the stroke of the lightning. These violent events are, with regard to the electricity of the atmosphere, what winds are with regard to heat and moisture. They restore the equilibrium where it has been dissolved, and carry the fluid from places where it is superfluous, to others where it is deficient.
We are so constituted, however, that these crises impress almost every one with a feeling of awe. The deep lowering gloom of the thunder-cloud, the overwhelming burst of the explosion, the flash from which the steadiest eye shrinks, and the irresistible arrow of the lightning which no earthly substance can withstand, speak of something fearful, even independently of the personal danger which they may whisper. They convey, far more than any other appearance does, the idea of a superior and mighty power, manifesting displeasure and threatening punishment. Yet we find that this is not the language which they speak to the physical inquirer: he sees these formidable symptoms only as the means or the consequences of good. What office the thunderbolt and the whirlwind may have in the moral world, we cannot here discuss: but certainly he must speculate as far beyond the limits of philosophy as of piety, who pretends to have learnt that there their work has more of evil than of good. In the natural world, these apparently destructive agents are, like all the other movements and appearances of the atmosphere, parts of a great scheme, of which every discoverable purpose is marked with beneficence as well as wisdom.
[CHAPTER XII.]
The Laws of Magnetism.
Magnetism has no very obvious or apparently extensive office in the mechanism of the atmosphere and the earth: but the mention of it may be introduced, because its ascertained relations to the other powers which exist in the system are well suited to show us the connexion subsisting throughout the universe, and to check the suspicion, if any such should arise, that any law of nature is without its use. The parts of creation when these uses are most obscure, are precisely those parts when the laws themselves are least known.
When indeed we consider the vast service of which magnetism is to man, by supplying him with that invaluable instrument the mariners’ compass, many persons will require no further evidence of this property being introduced into the frame of things with a worthy purpose. As however, we have hitherto excluded use in the arts from our line of argument, we shall not here make an exception in favour of navigation, and what we shall observe belongs to another view of the subject.
Magnetism has been discovered in modern times to have so close a connexion with galvanism, that they may be said to be almost different aspects of the same agent. All the phenomena which we can produce with magnets, we can imitate with coils of galvanic wire. That galvanism exists in the earth, we need no proof. Electricity, which appears to be only galvanism in equilibrium, is there in abundance; and recently, Mr. Fox[13] has shown by experiment that metalliferous veins, as they lie in the earth, exercise a galvanic influence on each other. Something of this kind might have been anticipated; for masses of metal in contact, if they differ in temperature or other circumstances, are known to produce a galvanic current. Hence we have undoubtedly streams of galvanic influence moving along in the earth. Whether or not such causes as these produce the directive power of the magnetic needle, we cannot here pretend to decide; they can hardly fail to affect it. The Aurora Borealis too, probably an electrical phenomenon, is said, under particular circumstances, to agitate the magnetic needle. It is not surprising, therefore, that, if electricity have an important office in the atmosphere, magnetism should exist in the earth. It seems likely, that the magnetic properties of the earth may be collateral results of the existence of the same cause by which electrical agency operates; an agency which, as we have already seen, has important offices in the processes of vegetable life. And thus magnetism belongs to the same system of beneficial contrivance to which electricity has been already traced.
We see, however, on this subject very dimly and a very small way. It can hardly be doubted that magnetism has other functions than those we have noticed.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
The Properties of Light with regard to Vegetation.
The illuminating power of light will come under our consideration hereafter. Its agency, with regard to organic life, is too important not to be noticed, though this must be done briefly. Light appears to be as necessary to the health of plants as air of moisture. A plant may, indeed, grow without it, but it does not appear that a species could be so continued. Under such a privation, the parts which are usually green, assume a white colour, as is the case with vegetables grown in a cellar, or protected by a covering for the sake of producing this very effect; thus, celery, is in this manner blanched, or etiolated.
The part of the process of vegetable life for which light is especially essential, appears to be the functions of the leaves; these are affected by this agent in a very remarkable manner. The moisture which plants imbibe is, by their vital energies, carried to their leaves; and is then brought in contact with the atmosphere, which, besides other ingredients, contains, in general, a portion of carbonic acid. So long as light is present, the leaf decomposes the carbonic acid, appropriates the carbon to the formation of its own proper juices, and returns the disengaged oxygen into the atmosphere; thus restoring the atmospheric air to a condition in which it is more fitted than it was before for the support of animal life. The plant thus prepares the support of life for other creatures at the same time that it absorbs its own. The greenness of those members which affect that colour, and the disengagement of oxygen, are the indications that its vital powers are in healthful action: as soon as we remove light from the plant, these indications cease: it has no longer power to imbibe carbon and disengage oxygen, but on the contrary, it gives back some of the carbon already obtained, and robs the atmosphere of oxygen for the purpose of reconverting this into carbonic acid.