630 CHYLIFICATION. 



through that wonderful laboratory of life termed 

 the lungs, that it assumes the colour and vital pro- 

 perties of blood, which contains the proximate 

 constituents of all the organs ready formed, in- 

 cluding most of the secreted fluids. By giving 

 off variable proportions of carbon and hydrogen, 

 that unite with atmospheric oxygen, caloric is 

 evolved, and a portion of nitrogen absorbed, by 

 which chyle is transformed into living blood of a 

 bright scarlet hue, its temperature elevated from 

 1 to 3 in the higher animals, and its solid parti- 

 cles augmented from three to four-fold, according 

 to the analyses of Vauquelin, Tiedemann, Gmelin, 

 Reuss, and Emmert. (Miiller's Elements, vol. i. 

 p. 566. Baly's translation.) 



How transcendently beautiful is the mechanism 

 by which grass, corn, fruits, and a multitude of 

 aliments, all differing in their composition, are 

 thus converted into the constituents of animals, 

 endowed with the power of renewing their or- 

 ganization, and of maintaining the activity of all 

 their functions. The art of man has scarcely yet 

 succeeded in ascertaining the proximate consti- 

 tuents of gastric juice, bile, pancreatic liquor, 

 chyme, chyle, and lymph. How then is it pos- 

 sible that he should imitate the exquisitely refined 

 chemistry of nature by which blood is formed ? 

 We have not even approached the perfection 

 of that amazing process of living combustion, 

 by which the temperature of animals is main- 



