The Botanic Garden, a Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of VegetationDarwin, Erasmus
History
The Botanic Garden, a Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of Vegetation
Darwin, Erasmus
Natural history; Plants -- Poetry; Portland Vase
In the note on l. 123, it was shewn that there is probably a supernatant
stratum of inflammable gas or hydrogene, over the common atmosphere; and
whose density at the surface where they meet, must be at least ten times
less than that upon which it swims; like chemical ether floating upon
water, and perhaps without any real contact. 1. In this region, where
the aerial atmosphere terminates and the inflammable one begins, the
quantity of tenacity or resistance must be almost inconceivable; in
which a ball of electricity might pass 1000 miles with greater ease than
through a thousandth part of an inch of glass. 2. Such a ball of
electricity passing between inflammable and common air would set fire to
them in a line as it patted along; which would differ in colour
according to the greater proportionate commixture of the two airs; and
from the same cause there might occur greater degrees of inflammation,
or branches of fire, in some parts of its course.
As these fire-balls travel in a defined line, it is pretty evident from
the known laws of electricity, that they must be attracted; and as they
are a mile or more in diameter, they must be emitted from a large
surface of electric matter; because large nobs give larger sparks, less
diffused, and more brightly luminous, than less ones or points, and
resist more forceably the emission of the electric matter. What is there
in nature can attract them at so great a distance as 1000 miles, and so
forceably as to detach an electric spark of a mile diameter? Can
volcanos at the time of their eruptions have this effect, as they are
generally attended with lightning? Future observations must discover
these secret operations of nature! As a stream of common air is carried
along with the passage of electric aura from one body to another; it is
easy to conceive, that the common air and the inflammable air between
which the fire-ball is supposed to pass, will be partially intermixed by
being thus agitated, and so far as it becomes intermixed it will take
fire, and produce the linear flame and branching sparks above described.
In this circumstance of their being attracted, and thence passing in a
defined line, the fire-balls seem to differ from the coruscations of the
aurora borealis, or northern lights, which probably take place in the
same region of the atmosphere; where the common air exists in extreme
tenuity, and is covered by a still rarer sphere of inflammable gas, ten
times lighter than itself.
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