490 M^Murtrie's Translation of the Eegne Animal. 



they are any thing but creditable to the persons engaged in the 

 work. 



But to return to Dr. M'Murtrie, who, in the very next page 

 to his blunder about the sun, has the following passage : — 

 *' The relations of vegetables and animals to the surrounding 

 atmosphere, are therefore in an inverse ratio — the former reject 

 water and carbonic acid, while the latter produce them." As 

 there is not a tyro in the elementary lessons of chemistry, who 

 will not be puzzled at this singular statement, which may rea- 

 sonably discourage any one from looking any further into this 

 translation, I feel called upon, by a sense of what is due to Cu- 

 vier, and to the reputation of this country for more correct 

 knowledge, to expose what seems to have grown out of pure ig- 

 norance, both of the language and the subject. Cuvier, in a 

 beautiful passage, is treating of the mutual action of the vege- 

 table and animal systems, for the preservation of each. He states, 

 that the soil and the atmosphere, present to plants for their 

 nourishment, water, cvnd air; that the first is composed of oxygen 

 and hydrogen, the second of oxygen, azote, and carbonic acid, 

 which itself is a combination of oxygen and carbon : that plants 

 select from all these, hydrogen and carbon, for their own com- 

 position, and reject the superfluous oxygen, by the aid of hght. 

 That animals, besides these elements, devour organized bodies, 

 of which hydrogen and carbon form the principal parts ; thus, 

 whilst animals retain azote, they reject the superfluous hydro- 

 gen and carbon, by means of respiration ; and this is accomplished 

 in the following manner. The oxygen of the atmosphere com- 

 bines vvith the superfluous hydrogen and the carbon of their 

 blood, becoming in the first instance water, in the second car- 

 bonic acid." He then proceeds to say, " that the relations of 

 vegetables and animals with the atmosphere are inverse ; the 

 first decomposing (defont) water and carbonic acid, the second 

 reproducing them." Dr. M'Murtrie has ignorantly reversed the 

 whole arrangement of nature, by stating that vegetables reject 

 water. 



Cuvier had stated that medullary matter appeared to the eye 

 like a soft boiled pulpy substance, (de bouillie moUe) where 

 nothing but globules hifinikiy small could be discovered. Dr. 

 M'Murtrie, at page 14, says, " it appears like a sort o( soft bouil- 

 lie, consisting of excessively small globules." This is not English. 



