488 [Assembly 



Schauenhurg, deputy from the lower Rhine, pages 330. Paris, 

 1839. From Alexandre Vattemare. 



This small book is almost entirely devoted to manures. It 

 commeilces that subject by saying : 



"All things formed of parts, whether organic or inorganic, are 

 destined to decomposition and transformation. Bodies are de- 

 composed with more or less slowness and difficulty, according to 

 the more or less variety of the parts. Under the first condition 

 are found living beings, animals, and plants ; under the second 

 condition, minerals. 



Those elements . of bodies which are free from the law of de- 

 compositioUj are, however, subject to that of transformation, on 

 account of their tendency to form combinations between them- 

 selves. 



There reigns throughout the organized world, movement and 

 incessant working, attraction and repulsion, growth and decay, 

 formation and dissolution. No organized body can exist two in- 

 stants in succession in an exactly same condition. Life itself 

 depends upon an entire transformation, continued even after 

 death, Indefatigable natui'e undoes their tissues, decomposes 

 their elements and restores them to their priniiLive i'orras, in 

 order to create, with the same materials, new combinations. 

 Nothing that ever has been is lost in its marvellous laboratory. 

 That which is, has been, and ever shall be. Like the Phoenix 

 from its ashes, the debris of beings again become beings. There 

 is nothing altogether new. The power of things are changing, 

 but their elements are imperishable. 



When we remove a forest of great trees from the ground, we 

 wonder whence the matter they c-ontain came, considering the 

 small quantity of humus which they grew in, but we find in- 

 fallibly that the forest has enriched the soil where it grew in- 

 stead of diminishing it. 



Vegetable Green Manures. — Lupin merits the first rank 

 among these. A field of it, at a distance resembles very thickly 

 planted hemp. The fertilizing properties of the Lupin were 



