ANIMAL. 



125 



phosphorus, for example, and sulphur. The 

 earth afforded by animal bodies incinerated, is 

 mostly lime in a state of saline combination ; 

 whilst that yielded by vegetables, besides lime, 

 consists of alumina, with an admixture, greater 

 or smaller in amount, of scilica. 



The peculiar combinations which form what 

 are called immediate principles, are much more 

 numerous in the vegetable than in the animal 

 kingdom, and are also generally more simple 

 in the former than in the latter, the immediate 

 principles of vegetables being mostly ternary 

 compounds, whilst those of animals are gene- 

 rally quaternary, nitrogen being added in these 

 last to the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, which 

 form the organic elements of the first. The 

 immediate principles in both classes are divided 

 into acids and oxides ; and many of these they 

 have in common. Vegetables, however, have a 

 third order of substances entering into their 

 composition, of which we discover no traces 

 among animals; these are the vegetable sali- 

 fiable bases. 



There are but few acids which exist in the 

 vegetable and animal kingdoms in common ; 

 and whilst their number is small among ani- 

 mals, it is very great among vegetables. 



The hydrocyanic acid has only been dis- 

 covered in vegetables; when it is procured 

 from animal substances, it is always formed un- 

 der peculiar circumstances, or during their de- 

 composition. 



Of the organic oxides, some albumen, osma- 

 zorne, sugar are common to both animals and 

 vegetables ; but they occur in very different 

 proportions in each : sugar, which is so abundant 

 among plants, is scarcely to be detected among 

 animals ; and osmazome, which is so univer- 

 sally distributed among animals, has only 

 hitherto been discovered in a few fungi. Of the 

 ternary compounds of carbon, hydrogen, and oxy- 

 gen, such as starch, gum, sugar, the resins, woody 

 fibre, fixed oils, volatile oils, camphor, extractive 

 matter, <$c. which enter so largely into the consti- 

 tution of vegetables, there are but a very few 

 to be discovered among animals, such as the 

 sugar of the milk and urine, the resin of the 

 bile and of the urine, the elaine and stearine of 

 the fat, the volatile oily principle of castoreum, 

 &c. and the camphor of cantharides. 



The quaternary organic compounds of car- 

 bon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, which 

 form the principal elements in the composition 

 of the bodies of animals, are, on the contrary, 

 very rare among vegetables. The most com- 

 mon of these are albumen, gelatine, fibrine, 

 animal mucus, and osmazome ; the less com- 

 mon enumerated are the matter of the saliva, 

 caseous matter, urea, and the pigmentary mat- 

 ter of the eye. 



Still vegetables are not without several of 

 these quaternary compounds, such as albumen 

 and osmazome, and they even possess others 

 which are peculiar to themselves, such as gluten, 

 the matter of the pollen of flowers, indigo and 

 several extractive colouring principles ; to say 

 nothing of the whole exclusive class of salifiable 

 bases, quinia, cinchonia, veratria, strychnia, 

 morphia, &c., &c., which appear to be com- 



pounds of carbon, united in large proportion 

 with a little oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen. 



Comparison of the organic composition or 

 texture of animals and vegetables. We find 

 many and much more striking differences in 

 the texture than in the chemical composition 

 of the two great classes of organized beings. 

 Both are made up of solids and fluids; but 

 with a few exceptions, the proportion which 

 the solid bear to the fluid parts is much greater 

 in vegetables than in animals. 



The fluids contained in the bodies of the 

 higher animals, the blood, chyle, spermatic 

 fluid, bile, urine, &c. have in general a very 

 different character from those that constitute the 

 sap of the more perfect vegetables, or that are 

 deposited as secretions in the nectaries and 

 various cavities of their flowers, leaf-stalks, 

 stem, &c. 



But the solids, entering into the composition 

 of each class, are still more widely dissimilar 

 both in their outward and in their intimate 

 characters. The most simple vegetables, the 

 cryptogamia, appear to consist of a homo- 

 geneous tissue, forming rounded or oblong cells 

 filled with fluids or a granular substance, with- 

 out any trace of proper tissue ; it is only 

 when we come to the phanogamous vegeta- 

 bles that we find any distinction of tissues, 

 namely, a cellular and a tubular tissue, the 

 whole body of the plant being surrounded with 

 a distinct integument or bark. 



The cellular tissue of vegetables, whilst still 

 young, is soft, homogeneous, and contains 

 cellules filled with a fluid often charged with 

 globules; when full grown, this tissue is made 

 up of cells properly so called, being spaces 

 surrounded with solid membranous parietes of 

 various forms and sizes containing different 

 matters. These cells appear composed of vesi- 

 cles placed side by side and running one into 

 another, surrounding the spiral and nutrient 

 vessels of the stem and bark, and opening so 

 as to form reservoirs filled with air, or resinous, 

 oily, or mucilaginous fluids. 



The tubular or vascular tissue of vegetables 

 occurs under two different forms spiral vessels, 

 and nutrient vessels. The former present 

 themselves in great abundance amidst the 

 woody fibres, but penetrate also into the leaves, 

 and even into the stamina, pistilla, and fruit. 

 They are not met with in the bark. These 

 vessels seem specially destined to include and 

 conduct the sap, which from the root ascends 

 to the extreme branches and leaves of all vege- 

 tables. The nutrient vessels, so called from con- 

 taining a fluid, the cambium or succus proprius, 

 different from the sap, prepared from this by 

 elaboration in the leaves, have now been demon- 

 strated in a great number of vegetables; they 

 are principally contained in the soft inner layer 

 of the bark, but they also penetrate every part 

 for the purpose of conveying the essentially 

 nutritive juice or blood of the plant. 



These elementary tissues, combined and 

 arranged in a great variety of modes, constitute 

 the root, trunk, leaves, flowers, and fruit of all 

 vascular vegetables ; and it is wonderful how 

 nearly the whole of this tribe, however dis- 



