88 SACCHARINE PRINCIPLE. 



ence which another has not the means of effecting. 

 In cold and gloomy summers we often complain 

 that the fruit to our taste is wanting in its usual 

 sweetness and flavour ; this fact may be probably 

 attributed to the deficiency of solar light diminish- 

 ing the supply of oxygen to the plant, and thus 

 the saccharine matter produced will be proportion- 

 ably defective. And what a mysterious disclosure 

 of the component parts of a natural body is here 

 presented to us! This very sugar, which I have 

 been lauding as the basis of animal nutriment, and 

 in accordance with the gratification of so many 

 creatures, yet contains above half its weight of that 

 very pernicious poison, the oxalic acid *, yet is so 

 combined with other matters as to be salutary and 

 pleasant. Even the very air we breathe is a com- 

 pounded poison, in the immense proportion of 

 seventy-eight parts of deleterious matter in a mix- 

 ture of one hundred ! This we know is eminently 

 necessary ; nor can any supposition at all have place 

 but that of unlimited wisdom and providence the 

 creation of man and his continuance in life is all 

 wonderful, his call, and his departure inaccessible 

 to the understanding. 



All the varieties of this snapdragon have the 

 power of maintaining a state of vegetation in great 

 droughts, when most other plants yield to the in- 

 fluence of the weather ; and it is the more remark- 

 able in these plants, as the places in which they 



* Henry. 



