BOTANICAL: THE UPPER CLASSES. 155 



easiest of all vegetable substances for the stomach to 

 deal with, the whole process of its digestion being com- 

 pleted in eighty-five minutes. 



A poultice made of rotten apples is of very common 

 use in Lincolnshire for the cure of weak or rheumatic 

 eyes ; and in Paris roasted apples applied over the eye?, 

 without any intervening substance, in the form of a 

 poultice, is of common application; and an old maxim 

 teaches that 



" If you eat an apple going to bed, 

 The doctor then will beg his bread." 



Now let us examine this section of Turkey rhubarb. It 

 contains abundance of raphides of a very strong dissolvent 

 oxalite of lime, forming the chief ingredient of the onion, 

 the crystals of which we shall see abundantly stored up 

 in its cuticle, and which give to it its peculiar flavour ; 

 but besides this chemical, rhubarb contains tannin, gallic 

 acid, resin, and other chemicals, forming 36 to 40 per 

 cent, of its substance. The structural likeness between 

 men and plants is remarkable in no point more than in 

 their compositions. A man's body weighing 126 Ibs. con- 

 sists of 11J Ibs. of charcoal, 11J Ibs. of gas, 8 Ibs. of lime, 

 and 05 Ibs. of water. Think of that ! that is, exactly 

 two-thirds liquid. Or, it may be put chemically, that a 

 human body of average weight consists of 45 Ibs. of 

 carbon and nitrogen diffused through about five pails 

 of water ; and yet when the body of a bulky woman was 

 cremated in the Woking Cemetery three years ago, her 

 corpse, weighing 200 Ibs., was reduced to 3 Ibs. when the 

 ashes were collected. 



Water forms the chief ingredient of plants, as it does 

 of man, and the Turks are correct when they place over 

 their beautiful fountains the quotation from the Koran, 

 " Everything lives by water." 



