74 THE CHEMISTRY OF FOOD 



3. Again, certain forms of the vegetable creation which are 

 unfit, in their crude state, for man's food, and which he rejects, 

 are chosen as food by some of the lower animals, and are, by 

 them, made ready for his use. Thus the bee takes the clover, 

 that man cannot eat, and from it collects honey. The cattle 

 eat the husks of corn and the dried grass, that are by far too 

 coarse for man, and in their own flesh convert them into tissues 

 closely resembling his muscular tissue. In this way, by the 

 aid of the transforming processes of the vegetable and animal 

 creations, the simple chemical elements of the mineral kingdom 

 are elaborated into our choice articles of food. (Mead Note 2.) 



by the vegetable world, and taken in by him either directly as vegetables, 

 or indirectly in the shape of the material of other animals. Without 

 vegetable life animals could not exist, and never could have existed ; side 

 by side they grow and nourish, indispensable to each other's existence ; 

 the tree breaking up the exhaled carbonic acid of the animal the carbon 

 being stored up in its increasing mass while the oxygen is returned 

 again, free and uncombined, to the atmosphere for the respiratory needs 

 of the animal world. Round and round go the elementary bodies in 

 ceaseless change of form, nevertheless never more than they were at first 

 and will be at the last the atomic material of this planetary sphere 

 being ever absolutely the same in amount. The material of the bodies of 

 Saul and his sons, when burnt by the men of Israel after their ignominious 

 exposure at Bethshan, in consequence of their defeat on Mount Gilboa, 

 are circulating amongst us still; it served others before them, and has 

 formed part of thousands since. It is quite within the bounds of chemical 

 possibility that some of the atoms contained in the fated apple of Eve, 

 may have lain in the material of the apple which revealed to Newton the 

 law of gravitation." Fothergill on the Maintenance of Health. 



2. The Food Circle in Nature. " There are some ultimate elements 

 in flesh as in flour, the same in animals as in vegetables. The vegetable 

 draws food from the soil and from the air, and being fully matured, it or 

 some part of it is eaten by the animal. But in completing the circle, the 

 vegetable receives and thrives upon the animal itself, in whole or in part, 

 or the refuse which it daily throws off. The very bones of an animal are 

 by nature or man made to increase the growth of vegetables and really to 

 enter into their structure ; and being again eaten, animals may be said 

 to eat their own bones, and live on their own flesh. Hence there is not 

 only an unbroken circle in the production of food from different sources, 

 but even the same food may be shown to be produced from itself. Surely 

 this is an illustration of the fable of the young Phoenix arising from the 

 ashes of its parent." Edward Smith on Foods. 



8. Certain forms of vegetable creation ? Example of the bee ? Cattle ? The inference ? 



