528 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



appears -very evident to me that liealthy and successful animal 

 growth and repairs would use only the " perfect bricks" of the 

 previous vegetable organisms ; and reject every particle or fibre 

 that was not perfectly in the state of organization that it pos- 

 sessed in the healthy vegetable or animal in which it previously 

 grew. The organizations of animals are characterized by the 

 good or bad conditions of the organization of the vegetable or 

 animal substances from which they were derived as food. When 

 there is only a very little disorganized matter in food, then the 

 vital principle rejects it quite, or nearly all. But when there is 

 a scarcity of normal food, and a great abundance of garbage or 

 partially disorganized food, or otherwise improper nourishment, 

 then the animal vitality makes temporary repairs or growth, as 

 well as store of fat or fuel, even from mud, disorganized food, 

 such as is most abundantly in the hog, and least so in sheep and 

 cattle. Yet their natural vitality evidently designs to replace 

 the bad materials with good, whenever normal food can be 

 attained. 



For example, of the general proposition that animal .organiza- 

 tions are characterized, to some extent, by the peculiarities of 

 their food, I recall to your memories how, when cows eat onions, 

 garlic, or rotten turnips and potatoes, or mow-burnt hay, or 

 sprouted grain, that their milk and butter, as well as beef and 

 veal, taste or smell of onions, or of the several abnormal sub- 

 stances that they ate. For the same reasons, distillery-fed pork 

 not only tastes peculiarly unpleasant, but is so soft that any 

 person can thrust his finger through any part of it, even if three 

 inches thick ; and oxen and horses fed on hay, meal, or grain, 

 damaged by water in transportation in vessels, form their flesh 

 so soft and tender that they cannot endure the yoke or harness 

 without galling or festering, nor without their hoofs soon becom- 

 ing too brittle to hold their shoes well, and then even their hides 

 make poor leather. 



But if such feed is continued to the same animal more than six 

 or eight weeks, and sometimes only a few days, then the vitality 

 will fail to retain it under animal control, and then it must be 

 thrown ofi" either by diarrhoea, fever, scrofulous exhalations, dia- 

 betes, or all of them. Indeed, fevers seem to burn out mal- 

 constituted flesh, by the heat of the lamp of life, as a caulker 

 or painter burns out the tar or other substances that encumber 

 their kettles. Yet if beasts are butchered when fleshy or fat, 



