OF PLANTS. 61 



friendly or hostile motion around him. In the icy North, 

 the faithful dog and the useful rein-deer are his companions, 

 the seal his captive, yielding clothing, food and light, and 

 the polar bear meets him in fierce strife. Beneath the 

 vertical rays of the glowing sun, the sharp tooth of the 

 great cats threatens him, the slender gazelle sports around 

 him, " the ruminant with cloven hoof," furnishes him with 

 food and clothing. The butterfly fluttered round Humboldt 

 and his companions on the chilling snow plains of Chim- 

 borazo, and yet the giant condor floated at an incalculable 

 height over them. Even in the firm coat of the earth, on 

 which we tread, the worm burrows his dark track. And 

 all this mass of life, not excepting man himself, is sustained 

 at the sole expense of the organic matter which the vege- 

 table world prepares for it. No single living creature which 

 is reckoned among animals, can live on inorganic matter. 

 The few examples which have been made known to us, the 

 earth-eating Otomacs, the negroes who swallow pellets of 

 clay, mentioned by Humboldt, the instances of men, pressed 

 by want, eating the so-called mountain-meal, or as Ehren- 

 berg as recently pointed out among the Finns, con- 

 suming the shells of fossil Infusoria, when accurately 

 investigated by physiologists, have shown merely that 

 these inorganic substances are to be regarded, not as food, 

 but as means of deadening the irritability of the stomach. 



But let us go back to an earlier epoch of our earth's 

 duration; there appear masses of living beings, formerly 

 peopling our globe, of which we can hardly form a con- 

 ception, and which, be it observed, were almost all animals 

 living upon vegetable food. The vast herds of Mammoths 

 which traversed the plains of Siberia, the countless remains 

 of gigantic oxen, sheep, stags, swine and tapirs, give us 

 evidence of the enormous consumption of vegetable sub- 



