86 SCIENCE PRIMERS. [MATERIAL 



boiled for a long time, the water will be found to 

 contain a quantity of gelatin, which sets into a jelly 

 as it cools ; and the body will fall to pieces, the bones 

 and the flesh separating from one another. The bones 

 consist almost entirely of a substance which yields 

 gelatin when it is boiled in water, impregnated with a 

 large quantity of salts of lime, just as the wood of the 

 wheat stem is impregnated with silica. The flesh, on 

 the other hand, will contain albumin, and some other 

 substances which are very similar to albumin, termed 

 fibrin and syntonin. 



In the living bird, all these bodies are united with 

 a great quantity of water, or dissolved, or suspended 

 in water ; and it must be remembered that there are 

 sundry other constituents of the fowl's body and of the 

 egg, which are left unmentioned, as of no present 

 importance. 



58. Certain Constituents of the Body are 

 very similar in the Wheat PJant and in the 

 Fowl. 



The wheat plant contains neither horn, nor gelatin, 

 and the fowl contains neither starch, nor cellulose ; but 

 the albumin of the plant is very similar to that of the 

 animal, and the fibrin and syntonin of the animal are 

 bodies closely allied to both albumin and gluten. 



That there is a close likeness between all these 

 bodies is obvious from the fact that when any of them 

 is strongly heated, or allowed to putrefy, it gives off 

 the same sort of disagreeable smell; and careful 

 chemical analysis has shown that they are, in fact, 

 all composed of the elements Carbon, Hydrogen, 

 Oxygen, and Nitrogen, combined in very nearly 



