C. T. JACKSON'S ADDRESS. 455 



matter has disappeared, and act favorably on vegetation. One 

 of the best farmers of Rhode Island informed me that he re- 

 garded the bones of menhaden as the most permanent and val- 

 uable of manures, and he extracted the oil from the fish for 

 sale, and used the refuse for manure on his land to great advan- 

 tage. Horn piths, consisting of bony matter may be very ad- 

 vantageously used for making the prepared phosphates for agri- 

 cultural use, and I hope never to see them thrown away or em- 

 ployed in mending roads, as Avas formerly done. 



It is possible that there may be some persons here who do 

 not sufficiently appreciate the value of inorganic matter, like 

 phosphate of lime, as a constituent of plants, but when they 

 look to the composition of the frame work of animals, they 

 will perceive that bread would cease to be the stall of life if it 

 did not consist partly of stone : for the bones of our bodies 

 consist chietly of phosphate of lime deposited in cartilaginous 

 cells ; and if our food did not contain that mineral, we should 

 have no bones, and could have no existence. 



The mother's milk, if it was not charged with this indispen- 

 sable ingredient, would not nourish and support the child, or 

 solidify its bony framework. Most of the mineral constituents 

 of plants are useful in the animal economy, and some of them 

 are as essential as the more abundant combinations of carbon, 

 hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, which constitute the principal 

 and more directly nutritive matter that forms our food. Phos- 

 phorus, sulphur, chlorine, iron, potash, soda and magnesia, with 

 numerous salts, enter into the composition of every one of our 

 bodies, and are essential to life and health. 



The adult animal, whose bony fabric is completed, is enabled 

 to spare a large proportion of its phosphate of lime in nourish- 

 ing and forming the bones of its young, and the mother acts 

 as a medium between the vegetable kingdom and her offspring 

 in preparing its food, her milk containing all the elements of 

 nutrition in the most favorable condition for easy assimilation. 



Potash and soda are well known as important mineral ele- 

 ments of plants, and they are also known to be valuable man- 

 ures when presented to the growing plant in proper combina- 

 tions. Their origin is to be traced to the mineral world, feld- 



