124 THE BIOLOGY OF DAILY LIFE. 



larly under consideration in another part of this 

 discourse, what strange and unexpected results 

 has it not brought to Kght in its application to 

 some of the most common objects? Who, for 

 instance, would have conceived that linen rags 

 were capable of producing more than their own 

 weight of sugar by the simple agency of one of 

 the cheapest and most abundant acids ? [* The 

 sulphuric. Bracconot, Annales de Chimie, vol. 

 xii., p. 1 84] that dry bones could be a magazine 

 of nutriment, capable of preservation for years, 

 and ready to yield up their sustenance in the 

 form best adapted to the support of life on the 

 application of that powerful agent, steam, which 

 enters so largely into all our processes, or of an 

 acid at once cheap and durable ? [f D'Arcet, 

 Annales de I 1 Industrie, F^vrier, 1829] that saw- 

 dust itself is susceptible of conversion into a 

 substance bearing no remote analogy to bread ; 

 and though certainly less palatable than that of 

 flour, yet no way disagreeable, and both whole- 

 some and digestible, as well as highly nutritive ? 

 [I See Dr. Prout's account of the experiments 

 of Professor Autenrieth of Tubingen, Phil. 

 Trans., 1827, p. 381. This discovery, which 

 renders famine next to impossible, deserves a 

 higher degree of celebrity than it has obtained.] 

 "What economy, in all processes where chemical 

 agents are employed, is introduced by the exact 

 knowledge of the proportions in which natural 

 elements unite, and their mutual powers of dis- 

 placing each other ! What perfection in all the 

 arts where fire is employed, either in its more 



