EXCESS OF NUTRIMENT. 135 



support the process of combustion in the lungs. On 

 their awaking from their torpor in the spring, the fat 

 has disappeared, but has not served as nourishment. 

 It has not caused the least increase in any part of 

 their body, neither has it changed the quality of any 

 of their organs. With nutrition, properly so called, 

 the fat in these animals has not the least connexion. 



The annual plants form and collect their future 

 nourishment in the same way as the perennial ; they 

 store it in their seeds in the form of vegfetable albu- 

 men, starch and gum, which are used by the germs 

 for the formation of their leaves and first radicle 

 fibres. The proper nutrition of the plants, their in- 

 crease in size, begins after these organs are formed. 



Every germ and every bud of a perennial plant is 

 the engrafted embryo of a new individual, while the 

 nutriment accumulated in the stem and roots, corre- 

 sponds to the albumen of the seeds. 



Nutritive matters are, correctly speaking, those 

 substances which, when presented from without, are 

 capable of sustaining the life and all the functions 

 of an organism, by furnishing to the different parts 

 of plants the materials for the production of their 

 peculiar constituents. 



In animals, the blood is the source of the material 

 of the muscles and nerves ; by one of its component 

 parts, the blood supports the process of respiration, 

 by others, the peculiar vital functions ; every part of 

 the body is supplied with nourishment by it, but its 

 own production is a special function, without which 

 we could not conceive life to continue. If we destroy 

 the activity of the organs which produce it, or if we 

 inject the blood of one animal into the veins of an- 

 other, at all events, if we carry this beyond certain 

 limits, death is the consequence. 



If we could introduce into a tree woody fibre in a 

 state of solution, it would be the same thing as plac- 

 ing a potato plant to vegetate in a paste of starch. 

 The office of the leaves is to form starch, woody fibre, 

 and sugar; consequently, if we convey these sub- 



