MR. HUNT'S POETRY OF SCIENCE. * IT may be doubted whether
there is any poetry in nature apart from the associations of the human mind, just as there is no such thing as colour except by the separation of the rays of light. Nature, in her lowest form, may become poetical, when the mind of the poet associates her with the common feelings or common interest of mankind. "The poor ' beetle that we tread upon" is not poetical in itself, but it becomes poeti- cal in the loftiest degree when it points the moral of the true terror of death, and the great high-priest of man and nature announces that the miserable insect " in corporal sufferance feels a pang as great as when a giant dies." Even the description of inanimate nature, though of the loveliest character, is unsatisfactory, or inferior at least, if not as- sociated with some human feeling or moral sense. Truth of description seems insufficient unless it be associated with man or his productions. Strike out the allusions to art in the following poetical description of
evening, and what will be left ? " Ere the bat bath flown His cloistered flight; ere to black Hecate's summons The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums Hath rung night's yawning peaL" And in a similar theme, though the description is more direct, what force is given by the appeal to observation and memory ! " The West yet glimmers with some streaks of day: Now spurs the latal traveller apace, To gain the timely inn." trete description, a description of nothing but the forms of nature, may be found, and among inferior poets or poetasters in terrible quanti- fies; but the life and interest of descriptive poetry will always arise from tome association with the arts, employments, or feelings of man : when they are absent, it will soon become insufferably tedious.
If this view is correct, the theory of Bowles seems disposed of, bough on different grounds from those advanced by Byron and others rho engaged in the controversy. It is equally clear that, strictly speak- og, there can be no poetry in science; for science is not even a descrip- ion of any part of nature, but a deduction of general laws from the ob- ervation of or experiment upon single facts. A scientific exposition may ndeed be made poetical, just as agriculture may be treated poetically by a ompetent poet ; but it will be done in the same way as other things,— tat is, by rendering the poetry predominant, and by selecting from the mace, or the art, such parts as are best fitted for poetical display, and lastrating them by appeals to the sympathies or associations of the Oman mind. For example, the security of the gloom-involved mariner rough his compass is a more poetical image than many of the recon- Ile or striking scientific facts connected with magnetism. Mr. Hunt's able and agreeable work will almost of itself support the leory we have advanced. It rather exhibits the wonders of science than S poetry. Mr. Hunt holds, it is true, that science, when it overturns superstition, establishes something else as vivid ; but his reasons Iher prove our arguments than his own. The ancient fauna, wood alpha, and the like, were poetical, because they had in some degree hu- m passions ; the wonders of botany, electricity, and the conjectures ounded upon their known facts, are not poetical, for the opposite rea- l'. When Mr. Hunt, excited by his theme, leaves exposition for en- reement or illustration, it is not poetry we have, so much as rhetoric, d sometimes rhetoric of a florid kind ; but be it what it may, it is r. Hunt's mind, not science. The passages that may be said to verge on poetry in the volume before us, seem to arise from some illustration itch adds force to the facts understood by mere intelligence from a The Poetry of Science, or the Studies of the Physical Pluenomena of Nature. By >trt Rant, author of Researches on Light," &c.; Keeper of Mining Records, Ma- si of Practical Geology. Published by Reeve, Benham, and Reeve.
reference to something not at all events scientific. The following passage descriptive of geographical colouring is rich and glowing, but would lose some of its interest if we took away the costumes ; and after alt, much of it is not science but facts.
" There is a remarkable correspondence between the geographical position of a region and the colours of its plants and animals. Within the Tropics, where
' The sun shines for ever unchangeably bright.'
the darkest green prevails over the leaves of plants, the flowers and fruits are tinctured with colours of the deepest dye, whilst the plumage of the birds is of the most variegated description and of the richest hues. In the people also of these climes there is manifested a desire for the most striking colours, and their dresses have all a distinguishing character, not of shape merely, but of chromatic arrangements. In the temperate climates everything is of a more subdued va- riety: the flowers are less bright of hue; the prevailing tint of the winged tribes is a russet brown; and the dresses of the inhabitants of these regions are of a sombre character. In the colder portions of the earth there is but little colour; the flowers are generally white or yellow, and the animals exhibit no other con- trast than that which white and black afford. A chromatic scale might be formed, its maximum point being at the Equator and its minimum at the Poles. "The influence of light on the colours of organized creation is well shown in the sea. Near the shores we find sea-weeds of the most beautiful tinctures, par- ticularly on the rocks which are left dry by the tides ; and the rich hues of the actiniaa, which inhabit shallow water, must have been often observed. The fishes which swim near the surface are also distinguished by the variety of their colours, whereas those which live at greater depths are grey, brown, or black. It has been found that after a certain depth, where the quantity of light is so reduced that a mere twilight prevails, the inhabitants of the ocean become nearly colourless. That the sun's rays alone give to plants the property of reflecting colour, is proved by the process of blanching, or the etiolated state produced by artificially exclud- ing them from light."
The Poetry of Science is in reality a judicious selection of the most striking and wonderful laws of creation, illustrated by the facts that esta- blish those laws. The branches treated of are very numerous. Motion, gravitation, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical forces, geology, and the plimnomena of vegetable and animal life—in short, nearly all the range of natural philosophy—is embraced in the sixteen chapters of the book. The great divisions, however, relate to matter in its essence, so far as we can reach it ; the laws which matter obeys, either as matter, as gravitation, or in taking form upon itself—as molecular forces ; the chemistry of creation, using chemistry in its largest sense, as applicable to all the conditions of inorganic substances ; and the more remark- able principles that seem to influence life. Sometimes, as we have said, Mr. Hunt falls into too rhetorical a style, and at others he may not always exhibit sufficient criticism in noting drawbacks, when it is his cue to enforce the wonderful : in his panegyric on the invention of Daguerre, for example, he omits to observe upon the stiffness, the want, of art, which distinguishes the productions of the sun. These, however, are trifles. The volume will be found a skilful selection and an eloquent exposition of the most attractive wonders of science.
The passage already quoted indicates the style of Mr. Hunt : an ex- tract or two will show the matter and variety of his book.
PROBABILITY OF THE NEBULAE wirporuusis.
The careful study of the condition of our own globe is in favour of the assump- tion of the existence of nebulous matter. By the process of art and nnumfacture, by the operation of those powers on which organization and life depend, solid matter is constantly poured off in such a state that it cannot be detected as matter by any of the human senses. Yet a thousand and a thousand results daily and hourly accumulating as truths around us, prove that the solid metals, the gross earths, and the constituents of animal and vegetable life, all pass away invisible to us, and become "thin air." We know that floating around us, these volatilized bodies exist in some form or other, and numerous experiments in chemistry are calculated to convince us, that the most attenuated air is capable, with a slight change of circumstances, of being converted into the condition of solid masses. Hydrogen $as, the lightest, the most etherial of the chemical elements, dissolves iron and zinc, arsenic, sulphur, and carbon, and from the transparent combina- tions thus formed, we can with facility separate these ponderous bodies. Such substances must exist in our own atmosphere; why not in the regions of space? Whether this planet ever floated a mass of nebulous matter' only known by its dim and filmy light, or comet-like rushed through space with eccentric orbit, are questions which can only receive the reply of speculative minds. Whether the earth and the other members of the solar system were ever parts of a central sttn, and thrown from it by some mighty convulsion, though now revolving with all the other masses around that orb, chained in their circuits by some infinite power, is beyond the utmost refinements of science to discover. This hypothesis is, however, in its sublime conception, worthy of the master-mind that gave it birth.
FACTS ON HEAT.
If spirits of wine and water are mixed together, a considerable degree of heat is given out, and by mixing sulphuric acid and water, an infinitely larger amount. If oil of vitriol and spirits of wine, or aquafortis (nitric acid) and spirits of tur- pentine, at common temperatures, be suddenly united, so much heat is set free as to ignite the spirits. In all these instances there is a condensation of the fluid. In nearly all cases of solution, cold is produced by the absorption of the heat necessary to sustain the salt in a liquid form; but when potash dissolves in water, heat is given out, which is a fact we cannot explain. If potassium is placed on ice' it sets fire, by the heat produced, to the hydrogen gas liberated from the water. Antimony and many other metals thrown into chlorine gas ignite and barn with brilliancy: the same phenomenon takes place in the vapours of iodine or bromine. Many chemical compounds, as the chlorate of potash and sulphur, explode with a light blow; whilst the slightest friction occasions the detonation of the fulminating salts of silver, mercury, and gold. Compounds of nitrogen and chlorine, or iodine, are still more delicately combined; the former exploding with fearful violence on the approach of an oleaginous body, and the latter with the smallest elevation of temperature: both of them destroying the vessels in which they may be contained. These fearful disturbances of com- bination can only be explained upon the supposition that the particles have the property of condensing around them an enormous quantity of the calorific and chemical principle, and retaining them in a latent state until some disturbance renders them sensible, by which the sudden destruction of the chemical union is produced and the full powers of heat and actinism are developed. The fact of great heat being evolved during the conversion of a body from a solid to a gaseous state, which is a striking exception to the law of latent heat as it prevails in most cases, admits of no more satisfactory explanation. As meelissisal force produces calorific excitation, so we find that every move- ment of sap in vegehbles, and of the blood and fluids in the animal economy, causes its sensible increase. The chemical processes constantly going on m plants and animals are another source of beat; and to nervous energy and to muscular movement must we also look for the sustaining caloric which LS essen- tial to the health and life of the latter.
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