Meigs County telegraph. [volume] (Pomeroy [Ohio]) 1848-1859, 1857-02-10

the bringing together of carbon and oxy
gen, and may, therefore, be regarded only
, as imprisoning forces. The earth then
J furnishes only the dead matter, while the
sunbeam provides the vivifying forces.
The lecturer here exhibited and explained
an ingenious diagram of the decomposition
of white ray Of sunlight, by means of the
prism, showing that the ray contains three
distinct forces. The luminous force caus-
es vegetation, and keeps nature in healthy
state of equilibrium. The caloric force
lexpands all bodies with which it comes IL
contact, driving into them an Infinite mum.
ber of little wedges. 1t sways Bunker
Hill Monument 10 and fro, and defects an
inch and half a strong iron bridge which
a heavy railway train could only spring
one-eighth of an inch. The sunbeam
heats the atmosphere and keeps it in con-
slant motion. 1t falls upon the ocean and
lifts it up as vapor, to descend in rain, ma
king springs, and brooks, and mighty riv-
ers. 1t is the sunbeam that turns all the
water-wheels.
The third force, distinct from the others,
is the chemical force. 1t is this which
paints the daguerreotype. All these forces
are refracted at different angles by the
prism, and occupy different positions in
the solar spectrum. Chemical force is
most active in the violet color, but a da-
guerreotype may be taken beyond the
colored rays in the dark.
We are familiar with that substance
which produces arrangement in the brain,
when mind and matter meet;-alcoho.-
Take drop of water from that, and you
have new substance which destroys all
consciousness of pain, and IS known as
ether. Wet your handkerchief in nitric
and sui phuric acid combined by the drug
gist, then put it into a cannon, and if you
fire it off, it will explode with such force as
to tear the iron tube into fragments. This
is gun cotton. Dissolve your gun cotton
in ether, and you have still a new product.
Spread this over glass, and expose it to the
sunbeams, and you get a picture the am
brotype. The third or chemical force has
looked in and produced a change in the
plate, and yourpicture is the consequence.
1t is now firmly believed that the sun
belongs to great colony of stars, and that
all the fixed stars are suns from which like
forces emanate as those proceeding from
the centre of our system. Sirius, when
observed through powerful telescope,
gives light so intense, that colored glass
is required to protect the eye. A body
that shines through almost incalculable
space with such power, borrows no light,
but is itself all original fountain of forces.
The star beams are found to contain light
and heat, and the stars have daguerreotyped
themselves. Their forces appear to be
identical with those of the sun beam.
1t is estimated that the suns rays in the
course Of year would melt sheet of ice
enveloping the globe, one hundred feet
Ghick. But the sun revolves once in twen-
ty-fye days, and is $4,000, 900 of miles
distant, so that we get only an insignificant
fraction of its beams. The rest is not lost
however; it passes away into space, and
helps to warm the universe, as the stellar
beams reach us. This mighty system of
exchange is always going on between the
stars. The amount Of heat we receive an
nually from all the stars, is said by Dr..
Lardner, and others who have examined the
subject, 10 be sufficient 10 melt eighty FIVE
feet of ice, and it is conjectured that the
power of the sun alone would hardly be
sufficient to maintain the present condition
Of things on our globe. r
The nearest star is reckoned to be sixty
millions of millions of miles from us
a distance which light requires ten years
to traverse-yet not only this, but stars
more remote, even to the nebule, at such
unspeakable distances that perhaps thou
sands of years elapse before the light can
reach us, send to us forces adapted to our
wants, appreciated by the human body,
detached through the medium of the eye,
subordinate to all the laws of human ply
siology.
These globes, so vast in their magni-
tudes and distances as to be beyond the
reach of human conceptions, are yet iden-
tical in form with those minute globules of
the blood, twenty millions of which per-
Iish at every beat of the pulse. Is there
any relationship between the globes of the
blood and the globes Of the stellar regions?
Is there direct dynamic relation between
the circulation of the human body and the
circulating medium which is of celestial
coinage? Science can only suggest the
inquiry.
1t is remarkable that all living things
have sprung from the atmosphere. We
can hardly realize that the flowers them
selves, so fragrant and beautiful have been
distilled from the pure and stainless medi.
um which pervades them. Are they moi
impenetrable flaments of light, interwo-
ven with the subtlest elements Of the leaf
by the swiftly flying shadows of the starsi
i What more insignificant to the uninstruct-
ed eye, than the leaf or the blade Of grass,
yet to the instructed they are sublime.- -
They are the doors leading from chaos to Q
world of organic order--from death to
,1lfe.
In that labratory Of truths, the human
brain, matter is brought into intimate rela.
tionship with spirit, and to prepare for this
, relationship, the aptul enginery Of stellar
n influences is kept in motion. The forces
!, lof the universe rulminate in mind IFS
sdliying being have been radiated and con.
\ densed from the floating, intangible air, il
! In not 6f that the fnrnas which nnnirnl then