16 QUARTERLYJOURNAL. 



chemist is baffled, and the wisdom of the wise is proved foolish 

 ness. 



The chemical composition of plants and animals is precisely th 

 same. This will be readily seen when we come to consider th 

 fact that the animal is fed by the vegetable, not only by simpl 

 eating it, but because the particular and individual parts of th 

 animal are first prepared by the plant before they can becom 

 available for the food of the former. While for a Ions timi 

 oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon were considered the so^ 

 necessary constituents of animal matter, the so called inorgan 

 parts being regarded as only accidental, the same substances we; 

 viewed as the constituents of vegetables, with the exception 

 nitrogen, which was supposed to be present in but very few plant 

 But the fact is well established now, that the component elemen 

 of both are the same, and that nitrogen is always present in t 

 vegetable as well as in the animal. 



It has been attempted to establish some sort of analogy betwe , 

 plants and animals, which does not exist. The only point 

 which they resemble each other, is in the possession of life, butt) 

 is employed in the production of very dissimilar results, and t 

 vital action is developed in essentially different ways. 



Animals require food of a highly organized character to supp 

 life. They are provided with a digestive apparatus of an intric 

 construction, by means of which the food when once received, 

 partially disorganized, and prepared for the building up of ■ 

 body. They are incapable of appropriating or assimilating • 

 elements which they require, in an unorganized form. 



Plants, on the other hand, require food entirely disorganizi 

 The construction of their organs of digestion, if they may 

 called so, and especially their mouths, is such that they can rece#i||i 

 no nutriment till it is so much decomposed as to be reduced t ■ ' 

 fluid form by solution. The spongioles of the roots are the pro 

 mouths of plants. These are pierced by numberless small h(.^i\\ 

 or pores, which are the extremities of their circulating vess'i 

 Into these pores nothing solid, although never so finely divide 

 can enter. Fluids only are capable of entering, and in this fclj^^l, 

 plants receive all their nourishment. Within these vessels, un f 

 the influence of light and heat, very powerful chemical afhni,s 

 are continually at work, by means of which, changes of an inMiHi 



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