6 The Chemical Statics of Organised Beings. 



ised a reducing apparatus superior to all those with which we 

 are acquainted, for none of these would decompose carbonic 

 acid in the cold. 



Next come animals, consumers of matter and producers of 

 heat and force, true apparatus for combustion. It is in them, 

 undoubtedly, that organised matter puts on its highest expres- 

 sion. But it is not without suffering from it that it becomes the 

 instrument of sensation and of thought; under this influence 

 organised matter undergoes combustion ; and in reproducing 

 the heat and the electricity, which produce our strength and 

 which are the measure of its power, these organised or or- 

 ganic matters become annihilated in order to return to the atmo- 

 sphere whence they came. Thus the atmosphere constitutes the 

 mysterious link which binds the vegetable to the animal kingdom. 



Vegetables, then, absorb heat, and accumulate matter which 

 they have the power to organise. 



Animals, through whom this organised matter only passes, 

 burn or consume it in order to produce in its aid the heat and 

 the different powers which their movements turn to account. 



Suffer me, therefore, if, borrowing from modern sciences an 

 image of sufficient magnitude to bear comparison with these 

 great phenomena, we should liken the existing vegetation 

 (truly a storehouse in which animal life is fed,) to that other 

 storehouse of carbon constituted of the ancient deposits of pit- 

 coal, and which, burnt by the genius of Papin and Watt, also 

 produces carbonic acid, water, heat, motion ; one might almost 

 say life and intelligence. 



In our view, therefore, the vegetable kingdom will constitute 

 an immense depot of combustible matter destined to be con- 

 sumed by the animal kingdom, and in which the latter finds the 

 source of the heat and of the locomotive powers of which it 

 avails itself. 



Thus we observe a common tie between the two kingdoms, 

 the atmosphere ; four elements in plants and in animals, carbon, 

 hydrogen, azote, and oxygen; a very small number of forms 

 under which vegetables accumulate them, and under which ani- 

 mals consume them; some very simple laws, which their con- 

 nexion simplifies still more : such would be the picture of the 

 most elevated state of organic chemistry which would result from 

 our conferences of the present year. 



You, like myself, have felt, that before separating we have 

 need of collecting our thoughts, of fixing with precision all the 

 facts, of bringing together and summing up the opinions which 

 explain and develope these great principles ; lastly, that it was 

 useful, as regarded your future studies, to give you in writing, 

 and in a clearer form, the expression of these views, which 

 were partly brought into existence under the stimulus of your 



