ORGANIC CHEMISTRY. O 



proportion of ingredients, and of great diversity 

 in the modes of their combination. So great is the 

 complexity of these arrangements, that althougli 

 chemistry is fully competent to the analysis of 

 organized substances into their ultimate elements, 

 no human art is adequate to effect their reunion 

 in the same state as that in which they had 

 existed in those substances ; for it was by the 

 relined operations of vitality, the only power that 

 could produce this adjustment, that they have 

 been brought into that condition. 



We may take as an example one of the simplest 

 of organic products, namely Sugar ; a substance 

 which has been analysed with the greatest accu- 

 racy by modern chemists : yet to reproduce this 

 sugar, by the artificial combination of its simple 

 elements, is a problem that has hitherto baffled 

 all the efforts of philosophy. Chemistry, not- 

 withstanding the proud rank it justly holds among 

 the physical sciences, and the noble discoveries 

 with which it has enriched the arts ; notwith- 

 standing it has unveiled to us many of the secret 

 operations of nature, and placed in our hands 

 some of her most powerful instruments for acting 

 upon matter; and notwithstanding it is armed 

 with full powers to destroy, cannot, in any one 

 organic product, rejoin that which has been once 

 dissevered. Through the medium of chemistry 

 we are enabled, perhaps, to form some estimate 

 of the value of what we find executed by other 



