MARVELS OF MAN.

North Otago Times, Volume 1, Issue 3, 10 March 1864, Page 3

MARVELS OF MAN.

While the gastric juice has a mild, bland, sweetish taste, it possesses the power of digesting the hardest food that can be swallowed. It has no influence at all on the fibres of the living animal, but at the moment of death it begins to cut them away with the power of the strongest acid. There is dust on sea and land, in the valley, and on the mountain top ; there is dust always and everywhere. The atnios phere is full of it. It penetiates the noisome dungeon, and visits the deepest and darkest caves of the earth. No palace door can shut it out; no drawer is so secret as to escape its presence. Every breath of wind dashes it upon the open eye which is yet not blinded, because there is a fountain of the blandest fluid in nature incessantly emptying itself under the eyelid, which spreads itself over the kurfaee of the eyeball at every winking, and washes every atom of dust away. This liquid, so well adapted to the eye itself, has some acridity, which, under certain cirumstances, becomes so decided as to be scalding to the skin, and would rot the eyelids were it not that along the edges of them there are little oil manufactories, which spread over their smface a coating as impenious to the liquids necessary for keeping the eyeballs washed clean, as the best varnish is impervious to water. The breath which leaves the lungs has been so perfectly divested of its life-giving properties, that to breath it, unmixed with other air, the moment it escapes from the mouth, would cause immediate death by suffocation ; while, if it hovered about, a more or less destructive influence over health would be occasioned. But it is made of a nature so much lighter than the common air, that the moment it escapes the lips and nostrils, it ascends to higher regions, above the breathing point, there to be rectified, renovated, and sent back again replete with purity and life. How rapidly it ascends is beautifully exhibited any frosty morning. But foul and deadly as the expired air is, natuie — M'isely economical in all her works and ways — turns it to good account in the outward passage through the organs of the a oice, and makes of it the whisper of love, the soft words of affection, the tender tones of human sympathy, the sweet strains of ravishing music, and the persuasive eloquence of the flushed orator. If a well-made man be extended on the ground, his arms at right angles with his body, a circle, making the naval the centre, will just take in the head, the finger-ends, and the feet. The distance from " tip to toe" is precisely the same as that between the tips of the fingers -when the aims are extended. The length of the body is just six times that of the loot ; while the distance from the edge of the hair on the forehead to the end of the chin, is one-tenth of the length of the whole stature. Of the sixty-two primary elements known in nature, only eighteen are found in the human body, and of these seven aie metallic. Iron is found in the blood ; phosphorus in the brain ; limestone in the bile ; lime in the bones> ; dust and ashes in all. Not only these eighteen human elements, but the whole sixty-two, of which the universe is made, have their essential basis in the four substances — oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon — representing the more familiar names of fire, water, saltpetre, and charcoal. And such is man, the lord of the carth — u &park of fiie, a drop of water, a grain of gunpowder, an atom of charcoal ! But looking at him in another direction these elements shadow forth the higher qualities of a diviner nature of an immortal existence. In that spark is the caloric which speaks of irrepressible aeti\ ity ; in that drop is the water which speaks of purity ; in that grain is the force of which he subdues all things to himself— makes the wide creation the supplier of his wants and the servitor of his pleasuies ; while in that atom of charcoal there is a diamond which sjjeaks at once of light and purity, of indestructible and resistless progress. There is nothing which outshines it ; it is purer than the dew-drop. " Moth and rust" corrupt it not ; nor can ordinary fires destroy it ; while it cuts its way alike through brass and adamant, and hardest steel. In that light we see an eternal progress towards omniscience ; in that purity, the god of divine nature ; in that indestructability, an immoital existence; in that progress, a great ascension towards the home and bosom of God. — Scientific American,

M^^^^^^Mte" *~ 1 '" Tn or friendship by gifts ; Jmp i g|jM|j|§B@fc^ they are lost as soon as they