In dalliance with danger he bounded in bliss IV. His voyage is o'er! As if struck by a spell WILSON. LXXVIII. THE COAL IN THE FIRE. 1. "You say that coal is transformed vegetable matter, but can you show us how the transformation takes place? Is it possible, according to known natural laws?" The chemist must answer that. And he tells us that wood can become lignite, or wood-coal, by parting with its oxygen in the shape of carbonic acid gas or choke-damp, and then common or bituminous coal by parting with its hydrogen chiefly in the form of carbureted hydrogen-the gas with which we light our streets. That is about as much as the unscientific reader need know. But it is a fresh corroboration of the theory that coal has been once vegetable fibre, for it shows how vegetable fibre can, by the laws of nature, become coal. And it certainly helps us to believe that a thing has been done if we are shown that it can be done. 2. This fact explains also why, in mines of wood-coal, carbonic acid-i. e., choke-damp-alone is given off. For in the wood-coal a great deal of the hydrogen still remains. But in mines of true coal, not only is choke-damp given off, but that more terrible pest of the miners, fire-damp or explosive carbureted hydrogen and olefiant gases. Now, the occurrence of that fire-damp in mines proves that changes are still going on in the coal; that it is getting rid of its hydrogen and so progressing toward the state of anthracite or culm-stone-coal, as it is sometimes called. In the Pennsylvanian coal-fields, some of the coal has actually done this, under the disturbing force of earthquakes, for the coal, which is bituminous, becomes gradually anthracite. 3. And is a further transformation possible? Yes, and more than one. If we conceive the anthracite cleared of all but its last atoms of oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, till it has become all but pure carbon, it would become, as it has become in certain rocks of immense antiquity, graphite, what we miscall black lead. And after that it might go through one transformation more, and that the most startling of all. It would need only perfect purification and crystallization to become a diamond; nothing less. We may consider the coal upon the fire as the middle term of a series, of which the first is live wood and the last diamond, and indulge safely in the fancy that every diamond in the world has probably, at some remote epoch, formed part of a growing plant. A strange transformation, which will look to us more strange, more truly poetical, the more steadily we consider it. 4. The coal on the fire, the table at which I write, what are they made of? Gas and sunbeams with a small percentage of ash or earthy salts, which need hardly be taken in account. Gas and sunbeams. Strange, but true. The life of the growing plant-and what that life is, who can tell?-laid hold of the gases in the air and in the soil, of the carbonic acid, the atmospheric air, the water, for that too is gas. It drank them in through its rootlets; it breathed them in through its leafpores, that it might distill them into sap and bud and leaf and wood. But it had to take in and retain another element without which the distillation and the shaping could never have taken place. It had to drink in the sunbeams, that mysterious and complex force which is for ever pouring from the sun and making itself partly palpable to our senses as heat and light. So the life of the plant seized the sunbeams and absorbed them-buried them in itself-no longer as light and heat, but as invisible chemical force, locked up for ages in that woody fibre. 5. So it is. Lord Lytton told us long ago, in a beautiful song, how "the Wind and the Beam loved the Rose." But nature's poetry was more beautiful than man's. The wind and the beam loved the rose so well that they made the rose, or rather the rose took the wind and the beam, and built up out of them, by her own inner life, her exquisite texture, hue and fragrance. What next? The rose dies, the timber tree dies, decays down into vegetable fibre, is buried and turned to coal, but the plant cannot altogether undo its own work. Even in death and decay it cannot set free the sunbeams im prisoned in its tissue. The sun-force must stay shut up, age after age, invisible, but strong, working at its own prison-cells, transmuting them, or making them capable of being transmuted by man, into the manifold products of coal-coke, petroleum, mineral pitch, gases, coal-tar, benzole, delicate aniline dyes and what-not-till its day of deliverance comes. 6. Man digs it, throws it on the fire, a black, dead-seeming lump. A corner, an atom of it, warms till it reaches the igniting point, the temperature at which it is able to combine with oxygen. And then, like a dormant live thing, awaking after ages to the sense of its own powers, its own needs, the whole lump is seized, atom after atom, with an infectious hunger for that oxygen which it lost, centuries since, in the bosom of the earth. It drinks the oxygen in at every pore, and burns. And so the spell of ages is broken. The sun-force bursts its prison-cells and blazes into the free atmosphere as light and heat once more, returning in a moment into the same forms in which it entered the growing leaf a thousand centuries since. 1 Strange it is, yet true. But of nature, as of the heart of man, the old saying stands-that truth is stranger than fiction. REV. CHARLES Kingsley. ... ... ... ... SELECT ETYMOLOGIES.-Absorb: L. absor'beo; fr. ab and sor'beo, sorp'tum, to suck in; h., absorption, etc. . . . Aniline, a chemical base yielded by indigo and some other substances; fr. an'il, an Arabic name for the indigo plant. Anthracite : fr. the Gr. an'thrakis, a burning coal. . . Bituminous: fr. the L. bitu'men, mineral pitch. . . . Carburet, carbon in combination with some other substance, the result not being an acid; fr. L. car'bo, a coal. Chemist: fr. the Gr. chu'mos (ku’mos), juice. . . . Crystallization: fr. L. crystal'lum, rock-crystal; Gr. krustal'lõs, clear ice. Distill: L. destil'lo, destilla'tum, to drop or trickle down; fr. de and stil'la, a drop; h., in-still, still (a vessel for distillation), etc. . . . Dormant : fr. L. dor'mio, dormi'tum, to sleep; h., dormitory, dor-mouse. . . . Epoch: Gr. ĕp'o-ché (ep'o-ke), a check, a pause in the reckoning of time; fr. ěp'i and éch'ō, I hold or have. Fibre: L. fibra, a thread; h., fibrous. . . . Graphite, carbon in one of its conditions; fr. Gr. graph'ein, to write. Lignite, mineral coal retaining the texture of the wood from which it was formed; fr. L. lig'num, wood; h., ligneous, lignum-vitæ (wood of life; fr. vi'ta, life, genitive villa), etc. . . Nitrogen, that elementary gas which forms the base of nitric acid, and composes four-fifths, by bulk, of our atmosphere; fr. Gr. ni'tròn, nitre, and gěn'naō, I produce.. Olefiant, forming or producing oil: applied to a certain gas; fr. ol'e-um, oil, and fă'cio, I make; h., oil, oleaginous.... Palpable, perceptible by touch: fr. L. pal'po, palpa'tum, to touch gently; h., im-palpable, palpitate.... Petroleum: fr. Gr. or L. pěť'ra, rock, and ol'e-um, oil; h. (fr. pet'ra), Peter, petrify, sall-petre, etc. . . . Pore: Gr. põr'õs, a passage or way; fr. pei'rō, I pierce; h., em-porium, lit., a commercial thoroughfare (en and põrõs), imporous, porous, porosity. . Retain: L. retin'eo, reten'tum, to hold back; fr. re and ten'eo, ten'tum, to hold; h., abs-tain, abs-tinence, ap-per-tain, appur-tenance, con-tain, con-tent, con-tinence, con-tinent, con-tinue, coun-tenance (lit., the contents of a body; h., of a face; coun = con), de-tain, detention, enter-tain (lit., to hold within), im-per-tinent, in-con-linent, lieutenant (lieu, F., place), main-tain (main, F., hand; lit., to hold by hand), main-tenance, mal-con-tent (mal, F., evil; fr. L. mal'um, evil), ob-tain, pertain, per-tinacious, per-tinent, re-tain, re-tentive, re-tinue, sus-tain (sus=sub), sus-tenance, tenable, tenacious, tenacity, tenant, tenement, tenet (an opinion held), tennis, tenon, tenor, tenure, etc. Though there are many terms from the Latin and French which we could not well do without, we still prefer, in familiar language, the good old Saxon terms. Thus we say rather like than similar, give than present, beg than solicit, kinsman than relation, neighborhood than vicinity, and praise than encomium. Our English is neither Anglo-Saxon in a new garb, nor the offspring of a union between Saxon and Norman-French. Both these languages were inflected, and had their rigidly fixed syntax dependent on inflections. The essentials of their substance the new idiom, English, has freed from all inflections and subjected to entirely new laws of syntax, which now make up its striking and exclusive character among the languages of Europe.-DE VERE (abridged). LXXIX. THE ESQUIMAUX. 1. THE Esquimaux inhabit a vast territory, extending from Greenland to the shores of the Pacific, and yet the whole race is supposed to number only about fifty thousand, or not much more than the population of such a city as Lowell. The average stature of the Esquimaux is far below that of European nations. The common height is little more than five feet, and a native of six feet would be a giant among his people. They have no intercourse with other nations except as they may be occasionally visited, and hence their language and customs are preserved almost free from change. 2. Uninfluenced by the demands of fashion, the dress of the Esquimaux never alters. Their garments are composed of the skins of the reindeer, seals and birds, and rare skill is shown in their construction and arrangement. The fine sewing which they perform on skin is done with the bones of birds instead of needles, and for thread they use the sinews of reindeer, seals or whales, split very thin and twisted together double or threefold with their fingers. 3. The Northern Esquimaux live in houses of snow or ice, but the huts in the south of Greenland are made of stone or wood, and covered with brush, turf and earth. In the summer they live in tents made of skins. It is not uncommon to find several families crowded together in the smallest possible space, where they eat, drink and sleep, with fish and flesh lying all around and dogs reposing on every side. 4. The food of the Esquimaux consists of almost every animal found within their region, but the seal and the walrus are their principal support for nine months of the year. Their improvidence often reduces them to terrible straits. Captain Parry speaks of meeting with some who had no food, and who were devouring the very skins which composed their clothes to keep them from starvation. 5. The children are carried about by the mother very carefully on her back, in a fur hood, until they are two or three years of age, and then they take care of themselves, being |