seen 'Old KNICK.,' they say, on that occasion! WE glanced over, at our friend PUTNAM'S book-store the other morning, the sheets of The Songs of Beranger,' translated by our esteemed contemporary, Mr. YOUNG, of the 'Albion' weekly journal. Nothing need exceed the beauty of the typography; while the broad page, and over and above all, the frequency and exceeding beauty of the engravings, leave nothing to be desired, in an illustrated work of the first class. That the translations are felicitous and faithful, we have the best assurance in the examples heretofore afforded us by the translator, in the columns of his widely-circulated and popular journal. . . . Do N'T say any thing ‘About Trout-Fishing,' Sigñor 'PISCATOR,' of Monticello, till we have time to tell you of our luck in one of the murmuring mountain brooks that pour their cold clear waters into Lake Horicon. Think of getting out of a wagon, half full of women, laughing and giggling, (enough to scare away the most imperturbable trout in any living water,) taking your pole, dropping a line over a rock, along which eddies and ripples the deepened brook, and hauling up a 'pound-and-a-half-er;' and you standing in the road all the while! Wait till you hear from us, Mr. PISCATOR,' if you please!' . . THE Successors to the late WILLIAM OSBORN, in the printing-office of this Magazine, are Messrs. BAKER, GODWIN AND COMPANY. They have replenished the office with new presses, all varieties of new type, cuts, etc., and are prepared to execute all orders, from town or country, in the very best style, and with immediate despatch. They are gentlemen of enterprise, of acknowledged skill, and of strict integrity; and it is a pleasure to know that the high character which the office sustained under the direction of our departed friend OSBORN will be continued by the new firm. We commend them confidently and cordially to the public. OUR business-associate and publisher has prepared a new Advertisement of the Thirty-Seventh Volume of the Knickerbocker, and has placed it in the front of the present number. He has brought the States of the Union together, and shown how their journals have spoken of our Magazine, and of our own humble labors in its pages. We have read the notices he has preserved and collated from the various papers of the country, political, literary, scientific, and religious, with a glow of sincere gratitude, that we have been able to secure this cordial, unbought, unsolicited suffrage at the hands of our contemporaries and countrymen, and with a renewed determination to labor still more effectually to deserve the high commendation which has been so liberally bestowed upon our work. We would call especial attention, not only to the Advertisement to which we have alluded, but also to the Announcement on the second page of the cover hereof. If the reading public only knew what a superb picture it is, by that true genius, Mount, which is offered by the publisher, we cannot help thinking that the literary inducements also tendered would be deemed as hardly in keeping with the pictorial attraction. But MOUNT only 'did his best,' and we shall certainly do the same thing, and so will our unequalled corps of contributors, among whose productions will be included a second series of that masterly novel, founded on fact, 'The Saint Leger Papers,' which have attained to such a wide popularity in this country and in England. WE have scarcely

received an indifferent communication, either in prose or verse, during the past month. We shall specially acknowledge in our next what we do not publish in that number.... SEVERAL new works, English and American, three or four of which are already established in the public favor, will receive that attention in our next issue which we have been compelled, much against our inclination, to deny them in the present.

THE KNICKERBOCKER.

VOL. XXXVI. NOVEMBER, 1850.

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.

NUMBER THREE.

No. 5.

WE have repeatedly alluded to the atmosphere, but nowhere have we given it the notice to which its importance entitles it. It is, as we have seen, intimately connected with the most important telluric phenomena. Out of the air the carbon, indispensable to the vegetable kingdom, is elaborated, and from it animals by the operation of their lungs abstract the oxygen, by which their blood is purified. And in this, as in every thing else, there is a mutual exchange between the two kingdoms. Animals are constantly throwing off carbonic acid, which is essential to vegetable life, while the vegetable kingdom, through the action of the solar rays on the green leaves, contributes to supply animals with oxygen, which is equally important to them. Vegetables,' says Professor Milne Edwards, 'absorbe the carbonic acid diffused in the atmosphere, and under the influence of the solar light they extract from it the carbon and give out oxygen. We thus see that it is in a great measure upon the relation existing between animals and vegetables that the nature of the atmosphere depends, and that in its turn the composition of the air must in some sort govern the relative proportion of these kings.'

The Professor establishes these facts by an analysis of animal and vegetable matter. It was ascertained that the proportion of the elements, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, were very different in the two kingdoms. The relation existing between them, and their dependance on each other, was beautifully illustrated by the experiments of Priestley, Ingenhaus, Woodhouse, and others. They first confined an animal in a small portion of air, or water containing air, when it was ascertained that it would soon die. They then confined one in like quantity of air or water, and put a plant or plants in with

it. In this instance it was found that the mutual exchange of kept the water pure, and that both animal and plant survived.

gases

The solar light is also necessary to produce this exchange of gases. Plants cease their labor at night, and may be said to sleep, as well as animals. There are exceptions, however, to this rule, as some plants are more active during the night, choosing its silence and gloom for the opening of their flowers.

The atmosphere is the medium through which sound is transmitted, and on its reflective and dispersive properties the solar light depends. Without it objects could be seen only in the direct rays. Every shadow of a passing cloud would be pitchy darkness; the stars would be visible all day, and every apartment into which the sun had not direct admission would be involved in nocturnal obscurity.' These powers of the atmosphere are increased by the action of the solar rays, which produce an irregularity in the temperature of the different masses of air. It is necessary, therefore, to diffuse in an agreeable manner the solar light, and mitigate its intensity. Without it we should have nothing but the glare of intense sunshine or the most impenetrable darkness. It is not only necessary to animal life itself, but to the more exalted faculties of man. 'Supposing we could live in its absence, however perfect might be our organs of speech and hearing, we should possess them in vain. Voice we might have, but no word could we utter; listeners we might be, but no sound could we hear. The earth would present itself to our imaginations as a soundless desert.'

It retains and diffuses heat, whether from the sun above or from internal sources. By these means, the temperature of the seasons is regulated, and the seas kept liquid. In this, however, its pressure is an important element. Were it not for the atmospheric pressure, our globe would be surrounded with a thick vapor. This pressure is necessary also to all organized bodies, composed of solids and of fluids. At great heights, where it is less, difficulties are always experienced by the adventurous traveller. Nearly all the young Americans who attempted to ascend Popocatepetl, which has an elevation of seventeen thousand seven hundred and twenty feet above the sea, were compelled to return long before they reached the highest point. They experienced great difficulty in breathing, and in a few instances the blood oozed out of their lips. This resulted from the fact that the atmospheric pressure was not sufficient to regulate the elasticity or expansive power of the fluid portion of the body. The atmospheric pressure is so small, says Humboldt, in his Aspects of Nature,' at an elevation of thirteen thousand four hundred and seventy-three feet, on the plateau of Antisana, that the cattle, when hunted with dogs, bleed from the nose and mouth. Herr Von Tschudi, referred to by Humboldt, in the work just mentioned, thinks the death of the dogs and cats, in the elevated town of Cerro de Pasco, is the consequence of the absence of sufficient atmospheric pressure. 'Innumerable attempts have been made to keep cats in this town, which is fourteen thousand and one hundred feet above the level of the sea, but such attempts have failed; both cats and dogs die at the end of a few days,

in fits. The cats are taken at first with convulsive movements, when they try to climb, but soon fall back, exhausted and motionless, and die.' It is necessary also to the vegetable kingdom. Plants depend on the atmosphere, as well as animals; they are therefore provided with porous openings in their leaves. They have a kind of respiratory system connected with their external and internal coverings, which is quite as important to them in the evaporation, inhalation, and exhalation of their fluids, as these functions are to animals; and the elasticity of all those fluids depends on the atmospheric pressure. It is owing to this fact, that the Alpine plants are adapted, by their more abundant pores, to their elevated position, and cannot be successfully cultivated in the low grounds. The increased pressure disturbs these vital functions, and sooner or later destroys them. This pressure, then, is as essential to life as the gases on which it depends. In the physical, as well as in our moral nature, certain restraints are necessary. When the first are removed, or when we are placed above the restraining pressure, the fluids of the body burst the delicate vessels, no longer able to restrain their elasticity; and when the 'interior power gives up its authority, the animal and the sensual take the place of the human and the spiritual.'

The tops of our highest mountains are covered perpetually with snow; establishing most clearly, that the solar rays would not be sufficient, without the aid of the atmosphere, to prevent a universal destruction of vegetable life. Without the atmosphere, the earth would be as barren and lifeless as the moon appears to be; yet it is not essential to any of the great mechanical functions of our planet in the economy of the solar system. The earth would perform its regular revolutions, maintain its axis, and discharge all its various offices in the system of which it is a member, without this envelope. But it would be an arid waste; volcanoes it might have, but no cities for destruction; mountains and valleys might diversify its surface, but they would be unenlivened by the murmur of streams, or the music of animate nature. Through its agency, the most remote climates are brought into a mutual exchange with each other, and their extremes greatly modified. This important appendage, or envelope, is dependant on a thousand agents for its elementary parts. Each thing acts upon every thing else, and all are bound together by relations and dependances which pervade the universe. Volcanoes and warm springs; decomposing rocks and decaying vegetable and animal matter; the respiration of animals and the combustion of the various articles of fuel, keep up the proportion of carbonic acid, so important to the vegetable kingdom; while the respiration of plants and various other natural agents, maintain the proportion of oxygen, upon which animal life depends. The alkalies are found in all felspathic and other rocks of igneous origin; from which they are disengaged by the action of the atmosphere and water. Had they been deposited in the earth, or in any easily soluble form, they would have been washed away in a short time. But deposited as they are, the action of the elements is just sufficient to keep up the necessary supply.

In the new edition of Professor Danberry's work on volcanoes, re

cently published, he says, ' potash, soda, certain earthly phosphates, lime and magnesia, must be present wherever a healthy vegetation proceeds. Now, some of these bodies are naturally insoluble in water, while others are dissolved with such readiness, that any conceivable supply of them, in their isolated condition, would be speedily carried off and find its way into the ocean. The first, therefore, must be rendered more soluble, the latter less so, than they are by themselves. Now, the manner in which nature has availed herself of the instrumentality of volcanoes to effect both these opposite purposes, is equally beautiful and simple. She has, in the first place, brought to the surface, in the form of lava and trachyte, vast masses of matter containing the alkalies, lime and magnesia, in what I have termed a dormant condition; that is, so united by the force of cohesion and of chemical affinity as not to be readily disengaged and carried off by the water. . . . She has also provided, in the carbonic acid which is so copiously evolved from volcanoes, and which consequently impregnates the springs, in these very countries, more particularly where volcanic products are found, an agent capable, as completely as muriatic acid, though more slowly, of acting upon these rocks, of separating the alkalies and alkaline earths, and of presenting them to the vessels of plants in a condition in which they can be assimilated. Thus, every volcanic as well as every granitic rock contains a store-house of alkali for the future exigences of the vegetable world; while the former is also charged with those principles which are often wanting in granite, but which are no less essential to many plants. I mean lime and magnesia. Had the alkalies been present in the ground in beds or isolated masses, they would have been speedily washed away, and the vegetables that require them would by this time have been restricted to the immediate vicinity of the ocean.' But large quantities of the alkalies and phosphates are carried into the ocean, where they are held in solution. These are collected by the algae, sea-weeds, which, although humble in the vegetable kingdom, are important in the economy of nature. These weeds are seen clinging to the rocks, or floating along the coasts, as idle vagrants of the deep; but they are not idle, not useless. The alkalies and phosphates held in solution by the salt water are collected by them and deposited on the coast, where they become useful, and, in many places, as in the north of Scotland, indispensably necessary. By the manure supplied by the decaying algae the peaty and waste soils are made productive, and potatoes raised in large quantities, where without it nothing could be produced. It is, indeed, a strange and melancholy sight, to see the thousands of poor people hurrying and driving along the coast at low tide, contending for these tangled weeds, upon which their very existence depends.

The algae are most beautifully adapted to the office they perform. Other vegetables are stationary, and derive their nourishment from the soil in which they are rooted and the atmosphere surrounding them; but these weeds have no roots. They have simple processes, or hooks only, for the purpose of clinging on the rocks. Their nourishment is derived not from the soil, for they have no connection with it, but from the alkalies and phosphates held in solution in the salt water. The