114 



and infinite reservoir of electrical fluid, oxygen in gases, iron in 

 metals standing highest in the former, hydrogen and potassium 

 in the latter. 



In contemplating the whole cycle of animal life, they were 

 at once met by wheels within wheels ; thus they had the vascular 

 cycle within the skull of a mammal ; again, that within the liver ; 

 and another within the kidney — each one differmg from and 

 independent of the other. 



Without further preface he would direct their attention to the 

 -dominant cycle and mainspring of the whole fabric — the venous 

 blood, ere it reaches the pulmonary heart. What was it they 

 found 1 A black, mephitic, used-up mass, not less injurious to 

 health than the poisonous " choke damp ', of a coal mine. This 

 fluid must be broken up, and for that end it was intimately 

 dispersed over another, or sub-dominant cycle, the air-receiving 

 cells, of the extent of whose surface they might form some idea 

 if tliey could lay down a delicate scarlet thread at the Town Hall 

 gates, and carry it over the English Channel to Montpellier, or 

 two hundred and eighty miles. This re-vitalized fluid returned 

 to the central hydraulic engine, and from there it was chased 

 through the whole arterial frame, whose area was computed to 

 measure double this length of space. 



Look at the cycle of alimentation. Here, again, destruction 

 precedes reorganization. Food was torn to slireds, triturated, 

 irolled, ground, warmed, moistened, and soaked with kaloid juice, 

 and thus chemically dissolved, altered, and at length swallowed, 

 thence to be subject to another circular churning, alternately with 

 a steady longitudinal kneading before it can pass the gatekeeper 

 of that mysterious vital laboratory', the stomach, into the intestinal 

 canal. What did they behold after the mass had received some 

 finishing touches from those factors of special juices—"' bile and 

 pancreatine 1 " " Wliite blood I" travelling upward against the 

 law of gravitation, to supply the mighty engine of the dominant 

 ■ cycle with raw material for its work, which was destined to turn 



