244 SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS [Nat 



The Laboratory of Organic Nature. 



It is in plants that the true laboratory of organic nature 

 resides : carbon, hydrogen, ammonium, and water are the 

 elements they work upon ; and woody fibre, starch, gums, and 

 sugars on the one hand, fibrine, albumen, caseum and gluten 

 on the other, are the products that present themselves as funda- 

 mental in either organic kingdom of Nature products, however, 

 which are formed in plants, and in plants only, and merely 

 transferred by digestion to the bodies of animals. The vege- 

 table world is the great originator and source of that pabulum 

 which is necessary for the existence of animals. Animals use 

 the materials which are elaborated for them. They alter them 

 by degrees ; they destroy or decompound them ; they bring 

 them back towards the state of carbonic acid, water, azote, and 

 ammonia, a state which admits of their ready restoration to 

 the air. B. L. 



Nature is Upheld by Antagonisms. 



The great primary object which Nature intended to serve by 

 the universal diffusion of the grass seems to be the protection of 

 the soiL Were the soil freely exposed to heaven without any 

 organic covering it would speedily pass away from the rocks on 

 whose surface it was deposited. The floods would lay bare one 

 district and encumber another with accumulated heaps; the 

 sun would dry it up and deprive it of all its nourishing con- 

 stituents ; the winds would scatter it far and near, and fill the 

 whole atmosphere with its blinding, choking clouds. It is 

 impossible to imagine all the disastrous effects that would be 

 produced over the whole earth were the disintegration of the 

 elements not counteracted by the conservative force of vital 

 growth, and the destructive powers of Nature not kept in check 

 by the apparently insignificant but actually irresistible emerald 

 sceptre of the grass. The earth would soon be deprived of itsi 

 vegetation and inhabitants, and become one vast desert cata- 

 comb, a gigantic lifeless cinder, revolving without aim or object 

 round the sun. B. 



