ion bricks, stones, bits of glass, etc.,
"Fly up through earth, water, and air, and combine into a perfect
palace, with walls, buttresses, towers, and windows all in exact
architectural harmony." But there is such a law and force for
crystals, if not for palaces. There is wisdom to originate and power
to manage such a force. It does not take masses of rock and stick them
together, nor even particles from a fluid, but atoms from a gas. Atoms
as fine as those of air must be taken and put in their place, one by
one, under enormous pressure, to have the resulting crystal as compact
as a diamond.

The force of crystallization is used by us in many inferior ways, as in
making crystals of rock candy, sulphur, salt, etc., but for the making
of diamonds it is too much for us, except in a small way.

While we cannot yet use the force that builds large white diamonds we
can use the diamonds themselves. Set a number of them around a section
of an iron tube, place it against a rock, at the surface or deep down
in a mine, cause it to revolve rapidly by machinery, and it will bore
into the rock, leaving a core. Force in water, to remove the dust and
chips, and the diamond teeth will eat their way hundreds of feet in any
direction; and by examining the extracted core miners can tell what
sort of ore there is hundreds of feet in advance. Hence, they go only
where they know that value lies.

SOME CURIOUS BEHAVIORS OF ATOMS

Ultimate atoms of matter are asserted to be impenetrable. That is, if
a mass of them really touched each other, that mass would not be
condensible by any force. But atoms of matter do not touch. It is
thinkable, but not demonstrable, that condensation might go on till
there were no discernible substance left, only force.

Matter exists in three states: solid, liquid, and gas. It is thought
that all matter may be passed through the three stages--iron being
capable of being volatilized, and gases condensed to liquids and
solids--the chief difference of these states being greater or less
distance between the constituent atoms and molecules. In gas the
particles are distant from each other, like gnats flying in the air; in
liquids, distant as men passing in a busy street; in solids, as men in
a congregation, so sparse that each can easily move about. The
congregation can easily disperse to the rarity of those walking in the
street, and the men in the street condense to the density of the
congregat