50 



SCIENCE PRIMERS. 



[§iv. 



I did mot say anything about what fibrin was made 

 of \ but it, like albumin, is made up of nitrogen, carbon, 

 hydrogen, and oxygen. It is not quite the same thing 

 as albumin, but first cousin to it. There is another first 

 cousin to both of them, also containing nitrogen, carbon, 

 hydrogen, and oxygen, which together with a great deal 

 of water forms muscle ; another forms a great part of 

 the red corpuscles ; and scattered all over the body in 

 various places, there are first cousins to albumin, all 

 containing nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, all 

 combustible, and all when burnt giving off carbonic 

 acid, water, and ammonia. All these first cousins go 

 under one name; they are all called proteids. 



25. Well, then, blood is thicker than water by 

 reason of the proteids in the corpuscles, in the fibrin, 

 and in the serum, but there is something else besides. 

 I will not trouble you with the crowd of things of 

 which there are perhaps just a few grains in a gallon 

 of blood, like the little pinches of things a cook puts 

 into a savoury dish; though, as you go on in your 

 studies, you will find that these, like many other little 

 things in the world, are of great importance. 



But I will ask you to remember this. If you take 

 some dried blood and burn it, though you may burn all 

 the proteids (and some other of the trifles I spoke of just 

 now) away, you will not be able to bum the whole blood 

 away. Bum as long as you like, you will always have left 

 a quantity of what you have leamt from your Chemistry 

 to call ash, and if you were to examine this 

 ash you would find it contained ever so many 

 elements ; sulphur, phosphorus, chlorine, 

 potassium, sodium, calcium, and iron, being 

 the most abundant and most important. 



