34-2 M. Dumas on the Chemical Statics of Organized Beings. 



as if plants realized a reducing apparatus superior to all those 

 with which we are acquainted ; for none of these would decom- 

 pose carbonic acid in the cold. 



Next come animals, consumers of matter and producers of 

 heat and force, true apparatus for combustion. It is in them 

 undoubtedly that organized matter puts on its highest ex- 

 pression. But it is not without suffering from it that it be- 

 comes the instrument of sensation and of thought ; under 

 this influence organized matter undergoes combustion ; and in 

 reproducing the heat and the electricity, which produce our 

 strength and which are the measure of its power, these or- 

 ganized or organic matters become annihilated in order to 

 return to the atmosphere whence they came. Thus the at- 

 mosphere constitutes the mysterious link which binds the ve- 

 getable to the animal kingdom. 



Vegetables then absorb heat and accumulate matter which 

 they have the power to organize. 



Animals, through whom this organized matter only passes, 

 burn or consume it in order to produce in its aid the heat 

 and the different powers which their movements turn to ac- 

 count. N 



Suffer me, therefore, if, borrowing from modern sciences 

 an image of sufficient magnitude to bear comparison with 

 these great phaenomena, we should liken the existing vegeta- 

 tion, — truly a storehouse in which animal life is fed, — to that 

 other storehouse of carbon constituted of the ancient deposits 

 of pit-coal, and which, burnt by the genius of Papin and of 

 Watt, also produces carbonic acid, water, heat, motion, — one 

 might almost say life and intelligence. 



In our view, therefore, the vegetable kingdom will consti- 

 tute an immense depot of combustible matter destined to be 

 consumed by the animal kingdom, and in whigh the latter 

 finds the source of the heat and of the locomotive powers of 

 which it avails itself. 



Thus we observe a common tie between the two kingdoms, 

 the atmosphere; four elements in plants and in animals, car- 

 bon, hydrogen, azote and oxygen ; a very small number of 

 forms under which vegetables accumulate them, and under 

 which animals consume them ; some very simple laws, which 

 their connexion simplifies still more; such would be the pic- 

 ture of the most elevated state of organic chemistry which 

 would result from our conferences of the present year. 



You, like myself, have felt, that before separating we have 

 need of collecting our thoughts, of fixing with precision all 

 the facts, of bringing together and summing up the opinions 

 which explain and develop these great principles ; lastly, that 



