things. Hence Pindar, when he would illustrate the superiority of the Olympic games over all others, sets out with observing, that they hold the same rank as water does among the elements, and gold among the gifts of Fortune.

Chief of Nature's works divine,

Water claims the highest praise,
Richest offspring of the mine,

Gold like fire, whose flashing rays
From afar conspicuous gleam

Through the night's involving cloud,
First in lustre and esteem,

Decks the treasures of the proud :

So among the lists of fame

Pisa's honoured game excel;

Then to Pisa's glorious name

Tune, O Muse, thy sounding shell,

WEST'S PINDAR.

Nor was this opinion confined to remote antiquity. Van Helmont, and others among the moderns, have likewise maintained, that water is the elemental matter, or stamen, of all things, and is alone sufficient for the production of all the visible creation. And Sir Isaac Newton thus expresses himself on this subject: All birds, beasts, and fishes, insects, trees, and vegetables, with their several parts, do grow out of water, and watery tinctures and salts; and, by putrefaction, they all return again to watery substances.'

The same great philosopher defines water to be a fluid salt, volatile, and void of taste. But Boerhaave sets aside this definition; for water (he observes) is a menstruum, or dissolvent of salts and saline bodies, which does not agree with the notion of its being a salt itself: for we do not know of any one salt that dissolves another.'-By some late experiments of Lavoisier, Watt, Cavendish, Priestley, and Kirwan, it appears, that water consists of dephlogisticated air, and inflammable air or phlo

giston intimately united; or, as Mr. Watt conceives, of dephlogisticated air and phlogiston, deprived of part of their latent heat. This doctrine is alluded to in my motto '.

In contemplating Nature, we shall often find the same substances possessed of contrary qualities, and producing opposite effects. Air which liquefies one substance, dries up another. That fire which is seen to burn up the desert, is often found, in other places, to assist the luxuriance of vegetation; and water which, next to fire, is the most fluid substance upon earth, gives to all other bodies their firmness and durability: so that every element seems to be a powerful servant, capable of either

Until very lately, water was esteemed a simple element, nor are all the most celebrated chemists of Europe yet converts to the new opinion of its decomposition. M. Lavoisier and others of the French school have most ingeniously endeavoured to show that water consists of pure air, called by them oxygen, and of inflammable air, called hydrogen, with as much of the matter of heat, or caloric, as is necessary to preserve them in the form of gas. Gas is distinguished from steam by its preserving its elasticity under the pressure of the atmosphere, and in the greatest degrees of cold yet known. The history of the progress of this great discovery is detailed in the Memoirs of the Royal Academy for 1781, and the experimental proofs of it are delivered in Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistry. The results of which are, that water consists of eighty-five parts by weight of oxygen, and fifteen parts by weight of hydrogen, with a sufficient quantity of caloric. Not only numerous chemical phenomena, but many atmospherical and vegetable facts, receive clear and beautiful elucidation from this important analysis. In the atmosphere, inflammable air is probably perpetually uniting with vital air, and producing moisture which descends in dews and showers, while the growth of vegetables by the assistance of light is perpetually again decomposing the water they imbibe from the earth; and while they retain the inflammable air for the formation of oils, wax, honey, resin, &c. they give up the vital air to replenish the atmosphere. Darwin's Botanic Garden, part i, page 132.

good or ill, and only awaiting external direction, to become the friend or enemy of mankind. These opposite qualities, in water in particular, have not failed to excite the admiration and inquiry of the curious.

That water is the most penetrating body next to fire, and the most difficult to confine, has been proved by various experiments. A vessel through which water cannot pass, may refrain any thing. Nor is it any objection, that syrups and oils will sometimes pass through bodies which hold water; this not being owing to the greater subtilty and penetrability of their particles, but to the resin with which the wood of such vessels abounds, and to which oils and syrups are as menstruums; so that, dissolving the resin, they make their way through the spaces left thereby. But water, on the contrary, not acting on resins, is retained in the same vessels. And yet it gradually makes its way, even through all woods, and is retainable only in glass and metals. It was found, moreover, by an experiment at Florence, that when shut up in a spherical vessel of gold, and then pressed with great force, it makes its way through the pores even of the gold: so that the most solid body is permeable to water, under certain circumstances. It is even found more fluid than air; a body being reputed more fluid than another, when its part will find way through smaller pores. Now air, it is well known, will not pass through leather; as is evident in the case of an exhausted receiver covered therewith; but water will pass through leather with ease. Air, likewise, may be retained in a bladder, which water oozes through. It is found, indeed, that water will pass through pores ten times smaller than air will.-But here it must be observed, that M. Homberg accounts, for this passage of water through the narrow pores of animal substances, which will

not admit the air, on the principle of its moistening and dissolving the glutinous matter of the fine fibres of the membranes, and rendering them more pliable and distractile; which is what the air, for want of a wetting quality, cannot do. As a proof of this doctrine, he filled a bladder, compressed it with a stone, and found no air to come out; but placing the bladder, thus compressed, in water, the air easily escaped.

Hence water, from its penetrative power, may be supposed to enter into the composition of all bodies, vegetable, animal, and fossil; with this particular circumstance, that it can always be separated, by a gentle heat, from those substances with which it has been united. Fire, indeed, will penetrate more than water; but it is not so easily to be separated again.

This property of water, joined with its smoothness and lubricity, fits it to serve as a vehicle for the commodious and easy conveyance of the nutritious matter of all bodies. Being so fluid, and passing and repassing so readily, it never stops up the pores, and leaves room for the following water to bring on a new supply of nutritious matter.

The same water, however, so little cohesive as it is, and so easily to be separated from most bodies, will cohere firmly with some others, and bind them together in the most solid masses; though it appears wonderful, that water, which may be shown an almost universal dissolvent, should, nevertheless, be a great coagulator.

Water, mixed up with earth and ashes, gives them the utmost firmness and fixity. The ashes, for instance, of an animal, incorporated with pure water into a paste, and baked with a vehement fire, become a coppel; which is a body remarkable for this, that it will bear the utmost effort of a refiner's furnace. It is, in reality, upon the glu

tinous nature of water only that our houses stand; for, take the water out of wood, and it becomes ashes; or out of tiles, and they become dust.

A little clay, dried in the sun, becomes a powder, which, mixed with water, sticks together again, and may be fashioned to any form; and this, dried again by a gentle fire, or in the sun, and then baked in a potter's oven by an intense fire, becomes little other than a stone. The Chinese earth, of which our porcelain vessels are made, which hold all liquors, and even melted lead itself, is diluted and wrought up with water. In fine, all the stability and firmness visible in the universe have been ascribed, by some writers, to water alone. Thus, they say, stone would be an incoherent sand, did not water bind it together; and thus, again, of a fat, gravelly earth, wrought up with water, and baked, or burnt, we make bricks, tiles, and earthen vessels, of such exceeding hardness and closeness, that water itself cannot pass through them. And these bodies, although to appearance perfectly dry, and destitute of water, yet being pulverized, and put into a retort, and distilled, yield an incredible quantity of water. The same, it is said, holds of metals; for the parings or filings of lead, tin, antimony, &c. yield water plentifully, by distillation; and the hardest stones, sea-salt, nitre, vitriol, sulphur, &c. are found to consist chiefly of water, into which they resolve by the force of fire. The lapis calcareus, or limestone, being exposed to the fire, affords a prodigious quantity of pure water; and the more of this water is extracted, the more friable does it become, till, at length, it commences a dry calx, or lime, wherein, in lieu of the water so expelled, the fire enters, in the course of calcination; and this is expelled again, in its turn, by pouring on cold water. Yet the same water and calx, tem