185G.] Quick Digestion — Hedltliy Food. 187 



are vinegar and mold ; with germinating seeds no sucli conversions 

 occur, under ordinary circumstances. If this germinating power is 

 from any cause, now destroyed, and the seeds are exposed to warmth 

 and moisture, theu the process of fermentation will speedily ensue, 

 because the seeds will speedily decay. The objection, that heat might 

 be generated by the chemical process of converting the amylum of the 

 seed into sugar, was controverted by the simple experiment of drying 

 germinating seeds, whose amyhnn was altogether converted into sugar, 

 and exposing them for a second time to the conditions of germination — 

 when it was discovered that the same degree of heat was produced at 

 the second time as at the first. In like manner a considerable degree of 

 heat is produced in a pile of small onions, as soon as vegetation begins 

 to develop roots and leaves. A quantity of green plants, heaped 

 together and surrounded by a non-conductor of heat, will show a much 

 higher degree of temperature than the air. 



The cause of this manifest heat in plants is, as yet, a problem to 

 which science does not seem to have given us an explicit answer ; the 

 most probable cause that we can assume is, that this heat is caused by 

 the process of nutrition in plants themselves. For we know that heat 

 is generated, or evolved, by the conversion of fluid matter into solid ; 

 and we also know, that the economy of vegetable nutrition consists in 

 the constant conversion of fluids, taken from the soil by the roots, into 

 the solid tissues composing the vegetable organism. 



G. M. Kern. 



QUICK DIGESTION — HEALTH Y FOOD. 



Of all articles of food, boiled rice is eligested in the shortest time — an 

 hour. As it contains eight-tenths nutritious matter, it is a valuable 

 substance for diet. Tripe and pigs' feet are digested almost as rapidly. 

 Apples, if sweet and ripe, are next in order. Venison is digested almost 

 as soon as apples. Eoastod potatoes are digested in half the time required 

 by the same vegetable boiled, which occupy more than three hours and 

 a half — more than beef or mutton. Bread occupies three hours and a 

 quarter. Stewed oysters and boiled eggs are digested in three hours 

 and a half — an hour more than is rec^uired by the same articles raw. 

 Turkey and goose are converted in two hours and a half — an hour and 

 a half sooner than chickens. Eoasted veal, pork, and salted beef, o^'cupj 

 five hours and a half — the longest of all articles of food. 



