VEGETABLES AND ANIMALS. 19 



niraal are in a descending scale. The food eaten is in a highly 

 Irganized form. It enters into the structure, only to pass soon 

 irough a change which entirely disorganizes it. In this state, it 

 fit to become the food of plants, when in them the ascending 

 ale commences. The unorganized materials are, by the plant, 

 ['oduced in an organized form. That the living vegetable has the 

 Wer of decomposing certain compounds cannot be doubted. The 

 .|.rbonic acid, ammonia, and water are separated, each into their 

 ildividual elements, before they are incorporated in the structure. 

 'he metallic and earthy salts are readily decomposed by the vital 

 lirce, and again recombined in new forms. The vegetable and 

 ijimal substances applied to the soil as manures, are not reduced 

 1j their simplest forms before they are taken up by the plant. All 

 iat is necessary is that they should be soluble. Thus they are 

 (Ipable of supplying carbon in other forms than that of carbonic 

 ijid. The fluid extracts of vegetable substances are capable of 

 Ijing absorbed, and we know nothing which would contradict the 

 fpt of their being decomposed in the system, and placed in the 

 llsues. 



|The food of animals is in all cases highly organized. The ani- 

 i.l has not the power, like the vegetable, to assimilate unorga- 

 |]:ed matter. And upon this point modern science has thrown 

 g?at light. The plant is the laboratory in which all the food of 

 a^mals is first prepared. The fat — the material for the formation 

 01 the muscles — the salts for the bones, &c., are formed in the 

 p.nt, either in the same state as they exist in the animal or in 

 si;h a form as to require but a slight change to bring them to such 

 aitate, so that the process of digestion would seem to be little 

 Hire than reducing the materials consumed by an animal to a so- 

 Ivlon, in order that they may be taken up by the vessels and car- 

 riil to be deposited in their proper places, to build up the body 

 ojcompensate its waste.* 



(Thus again the two are dependent upon each other, the animal 

 dbrganizing the food it eats, for the nourishment of plants, which 

 inheir turn again organize it for the use of the animal. The 

 pint is in reality the producer, and the animal the consumer. 



A. gentleman extensively engaged in the investigation of the medicinal properties 

 of lants, has lately informed me that in the cold infusion of vegetables he has dis- 

 co red globules corresponding in all but color to the molecules of the blood. 



