FARMERS' CLUBS. . 51 



and the lime in his teeth, were once in the soil ; that these could 

 not be in his body, unless they had previously formed part of his 

 food. And yet, we can neither live on air, nor on stones. It is 

 by means of the vegetable creation alone that we are enabled to 

 convert the mineral into flesh and blood. The only apparent 

 use of plants is to change earth, air and water into substances 

 fitted for the food of animals. The little lichen which, by means of 

 the oxalic acid it secretes, decomposes the rocks to which it clings, 

 and fits their lime for assimilation with higher organisms, is, as it 

 were, but the primitive bone-maker of the world. 



' The granite rocks disorganize, 

 To feed the hungry mass they bear, 

 And forest leaves drink daily life 

 From out the viewless air.' 



" By what subtle transmutation inorganic matter is changed into 

 organic, and dead, inert matter quickened with life, we cannot 

 tell. But this we do know, that an express apparatus is required 

 for the process — a special mechanism to convert the ' crust ' of 

 the earth, as it is called, into food for man and beast. 



" In Nature everything moves in a circle — perpetually changing, 

 and yet ever returning to the point whence it started. Our bodies 

 are continually decomposing and re-composing — indeed, the very 

 process of breathing is but one of decomposition. As animals live 

 on vegetables, even so is the refuse of the animals the vegetable's 

 food. The carbonic acid which comes from our lungs, and which 

 is poison for us to inhale, is not only the vital air of plants, but 

 positively their nutriment. With the same wondrous economy 

 that marks all creation, it has been ordained that what is unfitted 

 for the support of the superior organism is of all substances the 

 the best adapted to give strength and vigor to the inferior. That 

 which we excrete as pollution to our system, they secrete as nour- 

 ishment to theirs. Plants are not only Nature's scavengers, but 

 Nature's purifiers. They remove filth from the earth, as well as 

 disinfect the atmosphere and fit it to be breathed by a higher order 

 of beings. 



"Without the vegetable creation, the animal could never have 

 been, nor be. Plants not only fitted the earth originally for the 

 residence of man and the brute, but to this day they continue to 

 render it habitable by us. For this end their nature has been 

 made the very opposite of ours. The process by which we live 

 is the process by which they are destroyed. That which supports 



