Carbon is commonly mentioned as the meanest of elements, yet, when we come to consider its bearing in the mineral kingdom, and its vast relations in human industry, or its effect in the progress of civilization, it deserves a higher rank, or certainly a more generous classification among the constituents of the earth. For it not only occurs in various states in the air, the sea, and the more solid portions of the earth, but we find it an essential ingredient in the structure of all animal and vegetable life. It is really one of the most interesting and important of the elementary bodies, and may present itself in a variety of allotropic forms of remarkable and striking character. To its combination in the mineral substance known as coal the world owes its greatest blessing, save the golden grains Triptolemus gave to mankind. From its purest and crystallized form art derives its richest and most dazzling object of ornamentation. Without it the globe would soon become desolate and all organic life cease to exist. In contemplating the transcendent beauties of the purest of its states, the observer can hardly realize that between the sparkling diamond and the black, lustreless mineral known as graphite, there is only the difference in the arrangement of their invisible atoms. Yet, so far as we know at the present day, the two objects are apparently of the same composition, differing only in their system of crystallization. The first we recognize as the perfection of natural beauty, the concentration of brilliancy, and the standard of limpidity, while the other is directly the opposite in its effects and relations. The diamond, when exposed to sufficient heat, parts with its wonderful beauty and disappears, leaving only a minute trace of seemingly carbonized matter. It often perplexes the student in chemistry to explain the varied forms and the different properties of substances having apparently the same composition. It is not especially in the mineral kingdom that he meets with these strange anomalies, but his mystery becomes intensified when attempting to solve the problems of organic life. For instance, in seeking to explain the odors of vegetable substances, he finds that ten parts of carbon and sixteen of hydrogen appear to form the sole constituents of many perfumes,--like the oil of lemons, lavender, turpentine, etc. And yet, with the elements known, he not only finds himself unable to combine them artificially so as to produce the perfumes, or explain satisfactorily why bodies possessing the same constituent parts exhale odors so different. Among all these investigations and reasonings the question comes forcibly to the mind, why was the gem created, and has the day gone by when the conditions required for its formation no longer exist? With due respect to the phenomena connected with the crystallization and deposition of metals and minerals at the present time, we cannot answer this inquiry hastily.