XI PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE 331 



We found that our analysis of the organic 

 world, whether animals or plants, showed, in the 

 long run, that they might both be reduced into, 

 and were, in fact, composed of, the same con- 

 stituents. And we saw that the plant obtained 

 the materials constituting its substance by a 

 peculiar combination of matters belonging entirely 

 to the inorganic world ; that, then, the animal was 

 constantly appropriating the nitrogenous matters 

 of the plant to its own nourishment, and returning 

 them back to the inorganic world, in what we 

 spoke of as its waste ; and that finally, when the 

 animal ceased to exist, the constituents of its body 

 were dissolved and transmitted to that inorganic 

 world whence they had been at first abstracted. 

 Thus we saw in both the blade of grass and the 

 horse but the same elements differently combined 

 and arranged. We discovered a continual circula- 

 tion going on, the plant drawing in the elements 

 of inorganic nature and combining them into food 

 for the animal creation ; the animal borrowing 

 from the plant the matter for its own support, 

 giving off during its life products which returned 

 immediately to the inorganic world; and that, 

 eventually, the constituent materials of the whole 

 structure of both animals and plants were thus 

 returned to their original source : there was a 

 constant passage from one state of existence to 

 another, and a returning back again. 



Lastly, when we endeavoured to form some 



