jShurfurp of pianfx. 



NIMATED nature includes, besides animals, all plants, by which are 

 ( meant in this connection the living organisms that constitute the 

 *■ vegetable kingdom, such as trees, shrubs, herbs, vegetables, grasses. 



ferns, etc. It will be recollected that there are three great "king- 

 doms" in nature — the mineral, the vegetable and the animal; and 

 of these the one we are at present concerned with holds the middle 

 place. Plants are living things, and the superior vegetables approach 

 so nearly to what are generally considered inferior classes of the 

 animal kingdom, that scientists are at a loss to determine the exact 

 1 dividing line. On the other hand, it is well known that certain 

 M n ; • ■«» ^ w ^ minerals are remains of former vegetation. Hence, in nature one 

 /i!A) kingdom merges into another by gradations so fine that where one begins 

 / r^f '\ and the other ends remains a sort of mysterious secret eluding the analytical 

 powers of man. Vegetable life, like animal life, is a continued succession of renewal and 

 deca\, of assimilation and elimination. (;ro\\th ma\- therefore be said to be the lesult of 

 the assimilaling processes in excess; maturity, of a balance of the assimilating and elimi- 

 nating; and decay, of an excess of the eliminating processes. Vegetables derive their 

 support from the atmosphere, as v\-ell as from the soil, and, like animals, contain a far 

 greater proportion of water than of anything else. The other ingredients are carlion, 

 acid gas imbibed from the air; often a little nitrogen; and 



derived fn 



rboi 



liquii 



ton 



the 



rally 



.■nts kn. 



recognize<l as containing about eighteen of the sixty-five 

 :iture, and these are all contributed by the vegetable king- 

 iloni to the support of animal life. It is equally pleasing and instrueli\e to learn, through 

 the scientific principles of the chemistry of plants, how and of what materials the beautiful 

 forms that we see around us are made, as well as what useful propejties the)' possess. 

 Thereby we obtain an inierring guide to the most wholesome food for oursehes and oiu" 

 domestic animals; and a discriminating sense of the proportion in which the different 

 kinds should be used. Hence we know that it is unwise to partake of the same plants too 

 continuously, frequent changes being a fixed law of their healthful action on the human 

 system. By a knowledge of the chemical components of the human frame on the one 



402 



