82 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



apparent when we use vegetable substances as fuel upon our 

 hearthstones, or as food in our bodies, All the forces resulting 

 from heat and muscular exertion have their origin in plants, 

 and however great may be the exhibition of power, the leaves 

 of the trees, and the grasses of the field, have utilized or elab- 

 orated it all from the solar rays. 



Although the food of plants, as well as the method of appro- 

 priating it, differs from that of animals, there are analogies not 

 only apparent but real between them. In animals we have the 

 respiratory functions, and so we have in plants, for plants 

 breathe as truly as we do ourselves ; we require our food to be 

 composed of certain elements arranged in certain combina- 

 tions, — so do plants ; we find it essential that our food should 

 be in particular forms or mechanical conditions, — so do plants ; 

 we must be regularly supplied with food, and this is the case 

 with plants. These are some of the similarities existing between 

 plants and animals, and serve to show how intimate is the rela- 

 tion which subsists between plants and the higher forms of 

 organized structures. 



Although we have learned with certainty regarding the ele- 

 ments essential to plants, and also the forms of combination 

 required, we have yet to learn the exact mode in which they 

 acquire their food, and how they are able to build up such 

 bodies as cellulose, starch, albumen, oil, etc., from these ele- 

 ments. No processes which chemists venture upon in the 

 laboratory are found so difficult as the synthetical production of 

 organic compounds. Indeed, organic chemistry has thus far 

 proved totally incompetent to instruct how to form any one of 

 these bodies from the elements, and for their elaboration we 

 must look solely to the vital chemistry of animals and plants. 



It is a well understood fact, that without plants animals could 

 not exist upon our planet. In the wonderful economy of things 

 it is absolutely essential that there should be some intermediate 

 or connecting link between ourselves and the mineral kingdom, 

 and plants constitute this important link in the chain of life. 

 The three kingdoms, animal, vegetable and mineral, are corre- 

 lated and involved in a cycle of changes which are unintermit- 

 ting, and wonderful in their nature. We are incapable of 

 being nourished by any form of mineral substances, but such 

 nourish plants, and are transformed by them into vegetable 



