482 ORGANOLOGY. 



individual will warm, at the same time, several ; and for culinary pur- 

 poses, the fuel requisite to cook food for six men at one time is less than 

 would be required to cook six several meals for one man. Where there 

 is no limitation in the production of fuel, large quantities are needlessly 

 consumed. A great proportion of the inhabitants of the tropics* live 

 upon rice, which must be long under dressing by fire before it is 

 eaten. Extensive conflagrations of forests are even yet frequent; in 

 America, they continually occur when new land is taken into cultivation. 

 Taking together all these facts, I believe that we may arrive at some- 

 thing like an average yearly consumption of fuel to each man, by esti- 

 mating the quantity consumed between 50 and 60 N. lat. According 

 to the calculation made of the consumption of fuel in the barracks at 

 Weimar, in some institutions for boys, in some hospitals, and in sundry 

 families of large size, I reckon that a medium quantity of fuel consumed 

 for each head annually amounts to one klafter of hard wood. A klafter 

 of hard wood weighs on an average 3600 Ibs., and contains about 50 per 

 cent, of carbon. So that a thousand million of men, for domestic com- 

 bustion, would consume 1,800,000,000,000 Ibs. of carbon. 



For use in the arts and manufactures, I calculate on the use of coal. In 

 England, indeed, coal is consumed for household uses ; but then elsewhere 

 wood, turf, and brown-coal are sometimes used in the arts and manufac- 

 tures. According to Karmarsch and Heeren, the coal obtained yearly in 

 England, France, Belgium, Prussia, Austria, Saxony, and some of the 

 smaller German states, amounts to 75,000,000,000 Ibs. The countries not 

 enumerated (and especially North America) in the calculation would pro- 

 bably make it amount to about 80,000,000,000 Ibs. If this contained 72 per 

 cent, of carbon, it would give an average of 60,000,000,000 Ibs. carbon, 

 which would give 200,000,000,000 Ibs. of carbonic acid. In addition to 

 this, the process of respiration yields about 2^ billions Ibs. of carbonic 

 acid. Household fires may be computed to give 6^ billions. The 

 processes of putrefaction and fermentation may be estimated as fol- 

 lows. To every square rood we may allow at the least 100 Ibs. (some- 

 thing more than 0'5 per cent.) of putrifying animal substance, of which 

 yearly 2 Ibs. of carbon is converted into carbonic acid by decomposition. 

 This we assume as an average result drawn from De Saussure's direct 

 experiments. After the subtraction of the desert of Sahara, and other 

 large deserts, and of the polar regions, where vegetation is impossible, 

 the solid land remaining amounts to 3,000,000 square miles ; so for the 

 processes of decomposition 90 billions Ibs. of carbonic acid are obtained. 

 Exclusively of volcanic operations, the carbonic acid generated in one 

 year amounts to 100 billions Ibs., or in 100 years almost ten times as 

 much as is present in our atmosphere ; and 500 years would suffice to 

 make the air irrespirable for men and bejvsts, if there were not a pro- 

 vision in the economy of nature for subtracting the carbonic acid again 

 from the atmosphere, which should be continually carried on. Such 

 provision is found only in the vegetable world. 



The carbon produced in the processes of breathing, putrefaction, and, 

 for the most part, combustion, is annually afforded by the vegetable 

 world, and being freed from its union with organic matter, is converted 

 into inorganic carbonic acid. Can any reasonable man believe that the 

 store of organic substance upon the earth could long withstand such 



* When we reflect on the dense population of China and India, we may perhaps 

 assume that a third part of the inhabitants of the globe live on rice. 



