FROM MIRBEL. 291 



ive crops. If this is neglected, harvests begin to 

 dwindle, briers and brambles and a thousand wild 

 plants take the places of those which had been pro- 

 duced by agriculture. The flocks diminish rapidly ; 

 for the increase of flocks, and consequently of the hu- 

 man race, depends above ail things upon the prosperity 

 of agriculture. 



All is connected in the vast system of the globe, and 

 order emanates from the equipoise of conflicting phe- 

 nomena. Animals carry oft' the oxygen of the atmos- 

 phere, replacing it by carbonic acid gas ; and are thus 

 at work to adulterate the constitution of the air, and 

 render it unfit for respiration. Vegetables take up the 

 fixed air, retain the carbon, and give out oxygen ; and 

 are thus purifying the air tainted by animals, and re- 

 establishing the necessary proportions between its ele- 

 ments. In Europe, while our vegetables, stripped by 

 the severity of the season of their foliage, no longer 

 yield the air contributing to life, the salutary gas is 

 borne tons by trade-winds from the southernmost re- 

 gions of America. Winds from all quarters of the 

 world intermingle thus the various strata of the at- 

 mosphere, and keep its constitution uniform in all 

 reasons and at all elevations. The substances which 

 are produced by the dissolution of animal and vegetable 

 matter, diluted with water, are absorbed by plants, and 

 constitute a portion of the nourishment by which they 

 are maintained ; plants, in their turn, become the food 

 of animals, and these again the prey of others which 

 subsist on flesh. In spite of this perpetual state of war 

 and destruction, notlur.g perishes, for all is regenerat- 

 ed. Nature has ordained that the t ■». o ereat divisions of 

 organized beings should d? nd the one upon the other 

 for support ; ana thai both the life a»d death of indi- 



