192 FOOTNOTES FROM 



the higher, and man himself is nourished at the expense 

 of the creatures which he uses for food. The child lives 

 upon its parent's life, and one man suffers for another's 

 benefit. In short, the law of vicarious sacrifice is the 

 law of universal life ! 



In many of their properties, the fungi are closely 

 allied to some members of the animal kingdom. They 

 resemble the flesh of animals, in containing a large pro- 

 portion of albuminous proximate principles; and they 

 are almost the only plants that contain azote or nitrogen, 

 formerly regarded as one of the principal marks of dis- 

 tinction between plants and animals. This element re- 

 veals itself by the strong cadaverous smell, which most 

 of them give out in decaying, and also by the savoury 

 meat-like taste which others of them afford. Unlike 

 other vegetables, they possess the remarkable property 

 of exhaling hydrogen gas; and the great majority of 

 species, like animals, absorb oxygen from the atmosphere, 

 and disengage in return from their surface a large quan- 

 tity of carbonic acid. By chemical analysis, they are 

 found to contain besides sugar, gum, and resin, a yellow 

 spirit like hartshorn, a yellow empyreumatic oil, and a 

 dry, volatile, crystalline salt, so that their nature is 

 eminently alkaline, like animal substances extremely 

 prone to corruption. Another property they possess, 

 which connects them with animals, is their luminosity, 

 or the evolution of phosphorescent light from the struc- 

 ture of many of them. Some flowers, especially those of 

 an orange colour, such as the marigold and nasturtium, 

 occasionally present a luminous appearance on still warm 

 evenings, the light being either in the form of slight 



