ese ingredients, and this artificial ultramarine
is as beautiful as the natural, while for the price of a single
ounce of the latter we may obtain many pounds of the former.

With the production of artificial lapis lazuli, the formation of
mineral bodies by synthesis ceased to be a scientific problem to the
chemist; he has no longer sufficient interest in it to pursue the
subject. He may now be satisfied that analysis will reveal to him
the true constitution of minerals. But to the mineralogist and
geologist it is still in a great measure an unexplored field,
offering inquiries of the highest interest and importance to their
pursuits.

After becoming acquainted with the constituent elements of all the
substances within our reach and the mutual relations of these
elements, the remarkable transmutations to which the bodies are
subject under the influence of the vital powers of plants and
animals, became the principal object of chemical investigations, and
the highest point of interest. A new science, inexhaustible as life
itself, is here presented us, standing upon the sound and solid
foundation of a well established inorganic chemistry. Thus the
progress of science is, like the development of nature's works,
gradual and expansive. After the buds and branches spring forth the
leaves and blossoms, after the blossoms the fruit.

Chemistry, in its application to animals and vegetables, endeavours
jointly with physiology to enlighten us respecting the mysterious
processes and sources of organic life.

LETTER II

My dear Sir,

In my former letter I reminded you that three of the supposed
elements of the ancients represent the forms or state in which all
the ponderable matter of our globe exists; I would now observe, that
no substance possesses absolutely any one of those conditions; that
modern chemistry recognises nothing unchangeably solid, liquid, or
aeriform: means have been devised for effecting a change of state in
almost every known substance. Platinum, alumina, and rock crystal,
it is true, cannot be liquified by the most intense heat of our
furnaces, but they melt like wax before the flame of the
oxy-hydrogen blowpipe. On the other hand, of the twenty-eight
gaseous bodies with which we are acquainted, twenty-five may be
reduced to a liquid state, and one into a solid. Probably, ere long,
similar changes of condition will be extended to every form of
matter.

There are many things relating to this co