1864. | Vorxoxcer on Milk, and Dairy Arrangements. 267 
by the retrograde metamorphosis of the Organic Compounds generated 
by the instrumentality of the Plant, whereby they ultimately return 
to the simple binary forms (water, carbonic acid, and ammonia,) 
which serve as the essential food of vegetables. Of these Organic 
Compounds, one portion (a) is converted into the substance of the 
living body, by a constructive force which (in so far as it is not sup- 
plied by the direct agency of external heat) is developed by the retro- 
grade metamorphosis of another portion (b) of the food. And whilst 
the ultimate descent of the first-named portion (a) to the simple 
condition from which it was originally drawn, becomes one source of 
the peculiarly Animal powers—the psychical and the motor—exerted 
by the organism, another source of these may be found in a like 
metamorphosis of a further portion (c) of the food which has never 
been converted into living tissue. 
Thus, during the whole Life of the Animal, the organism is restoring 
to the world around both the materials and the forces which it draws 
from it; and after its death this restoration is completed, as in Plants, 
by the final decomposition of its substance. But there is this marked 
contrast between the two kingdoms of Organic nature in their material 
and dynamical relations to the Inorganic world,—that whilst the Vege- 
table is constantly engaged (so to speak) in raising its component 
materials from a lower plane to the higher, by means of the power 
which it draws from the solar rays, the Animal, whilst raising one por- 
tion of these to a still higher level by the descent of another portion 
to a lower, ultimately lets down the whole of what the Plant had 
raised ; in so doing, however, giving back to the universe, in the form 
of Heat and Motion, the equivalent of the Light and Heat which the 
Plant had taken from it. 
ON MILK, AND DAIRY ARRANGEMENTS. 
By Dr. Aveustus VortcKer, Consulting Chemist to the Royal 
Agricultural Society of England. 
Amone the alimentary materials so bountifully supplied to man, 
there are few that may rank in importance by the side of the fluid 
whose constitution we are about to examine. Distinguished by a just 
combination of flesh-forming and fat-prodncing elements, with those 
salines which are best adapted for preserving the solution of the solid 
materials ; remarkable for the facility with which the digestive system 
appropriates its nutriment; time-honoured as the support of helpless 
infaney ; symbolical of mildness and sweetness, its very simplicity 
would seem a claim to its exemption alike from suspicion or inquiry ; 
but, alas! for the materialism of the age, its value may be repre- 
sented by so many pence, its mildness is perverted by adulteration, 
and the food of babes is too often suggestive of chalk and water, with 
a judicious thickening of brains and treacle. Milk, like everything 
else, being reducible to a question of money, we do not hesitate to 
