THE PAGE OF NATURE. 245 



It is a remarkable fact that we owe beer, wine, and 

 spirits, to the agency of the minute undeveloped cells of 

 the common mould, which in other forms is so de- 

 structive and offensive to us ! 



For what purpose, it may be asked by the incurious 

 or the credulous, were plants so excessively numerous, 

 and so universally distributed, created 1 for to many in- 

 dividuals they are such objects of prejudice and disgust, 

 that their real importance as useful productions is little 

 appreciated. We do not know indeed all the wise pur- 

 poses which He who created nothing in vain intended 

 them to serve in the economy of nature ; but we are 

 acquainted with some of them, and these are so obvious, 

 so vastly important, and reveal such numerous and strik- 

 ing instances of adaptation of means to ends, that we 

 cannot but lament that such ignorance and prejudice 

 regarding them should exist in this country. There is 

 no elementary and self-subsistent organic matter in 

 nature, as Buffon erroneously taught, and the health 

 and wellbeing of man himself may more or less imme- 

 diately depend upon the important offices which these 

 despised productions were created to perform. Appear- 

 ing as they do in those months of the year when the 

 flowers are fading, the leaves falling, and all nature yield- 

 ing herself up as the passive victim of decay and death, 

 they are obviously intended to remove those decompos- 

 ing tissues which would otherwise pour volumes of 

 noxious vapour into the atmosphere, and render it unfit 

 to support life ; to call back into the great vortex, the 

 ceaseless round of existence, those fugitive particles of 

 effete matter which had served their appointed purpose 



