THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 5 o 9 



that elephants have immortal souls as much as men, and are, as a spe- 

 cies, far more deserving of immortality. I believe it is as much an act 

 of murder to wantonly take the life of a healthy elephant as to kill a 

 native Australian or a Central-African savage. If it is more culpable 

 to kill a highly developed man than an elephant, it is also more cul- 

 pable to kill an elephant than an echinoderm. Many men are both 

 morally and intellectually lower than many quadrupeds, and are, in my 

 opinion, as wholly destitute of that indefinable attribute called the 

 soul as all the lower animals are commonly supposed to be. 



If an investigator like Darwin or an educator like Dr. Howe 

 should take it in hand to develop the mind of the elephant to the 

 highest possible extent, his results would be awaited with peculiar in- 

 terest, and it would be strange if they did not necessitate a revision 

 of the theories now common among those who study the purely 

 speculative portion of theology, which is based on man's immortal 

 soul. 



THE CHEMISTKY OF COOKERY. 



By W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS. 



VII. 



A SHEEP or an ox, a fowl or a rabbit, is made up, like ourselves, 

 of organic structures and blood, the organs continually wasting 

 as they work, and being renewed by the blood ; or, otherwise described, 

 the component molecules of these organs are continually dying of old 

 age as their work is done, and replaced by new-born successors gener- 

 ated by the blood. 



These molecules are, for the most part, cellular, each cell living a 

 little life of its own, generated with a definite individuality, doing its 

 own life-work, then shriveling in decay, dying in the midst of vital 

 surroundings, suffering cremation, and thereby contributing to the 

 animal heat necessary for the life of its successors, and even giving 

 up a portion of its substance to supply them with absorption - food. 

 The cell-walls are mainly composed of gelatine, or the substance which 

 produces gelatine, as already explained, while the contents of the cell 

 are albuminous matter or fat, or the special constituents of the par- 

 ticular organ it composes. A description of all these constituents 

 would carry me too far into details. I must, therefore, only refer to 

 those which constitute the bulk of animal food, and which are altered 

 in the process of cooking. 



In the lean of meat, i. e., the muscles of the animal, we have the 

 albuminous juices already described, the gelatinous membranes, sheaths, 

 and walls of the muscular fiber, and the fiber itself. This is composed 

 of muscular fibrin, or syntonin, as Lehmann has named it. Living 



