Creative Force of Light.

Just above the color vibrations of the unbraided sunbeam, above the violet, which is the highest number our eyes can detect, is a chemical force; it works the changes on the glass plate in photography; it transfigures the dark, cold soil into woody fibre, green leaf, downy rose petals, luscious fruit, and far pervasive odor; it flushes the wide acres of the prairie with grass and flowers, fills the valleys with trees, and covers the hills with corn, a single blade of which all the power of man could not make.

This power is also fit and able to survive.  The engineer Stephenson once asked Dr. Buckland, “What is the power that drives that train?” pointing to one thundering by.  “Well, I suppose it is one of your big engines.”  “But what drives the engine?” “Oh, very likely a canny Newcastle driver.”  “No, sir,” said the engineer, “it is sunshine.”  The doctor was too dull to take it in.  Let us see if we can trace such an evident effect to that distant cause.  Ages ago the warm sunshine, falling on the scarcely lifted hills of Pennsylvania, caused the reedy vegetation to grow along the banks of [Page 31] shallow seas, accumulated vast amounts of this vegetation, sunk it beneath the sea, roofed it over with sand, compacted the sand into rock, and changed this vegetable matter—­the products of the sunshine—­into coal; and when it was ready, lifted it once more, all garnered for the use of men, roofed over with mighty mountains.  We mine the coal, bring out the heat, raise the steam, drive the train, so that in the ultimate analyses it is sunshine that drives the train.  These great beds of coal are nothing but condensed sunshine—­the sun’s great force, through ages gone, preserved for our use to-day.  And it is so full of force that a piece of coal that will weigh three pounds (as big as a large pair of fists) has as much power in it as the average man puts into a day’s work.  Three tons of coal will pump as much water or shovel as much sand as the average man will pump or shovel in a lifetime; so that if a man proposes to do nothing but work with his muscles, he had better dig three tons of coal and set that to do his work and then die, because his work will be better done, and without any cost for the maintenance of the doer.

Come down below the color vibrations, and we shall find that those which are too infrequent to be visible, manifest as heat.  Naturally there will be as many different kinds of heat as tints of color, because there is as great a range of numbers of vibration.  It is our privilege to sift them apart and sort them over, and find what kinds are best adapted to our various uses.