Dana on the relations of Death to Life in Nature. 319 



There are thus five states of stored force in nature— three in the 

 inorganic, the solid, liquid, and gaseous ; and two in the organic, 

 the vegetable and animal. 



l^ow what is the provision to meet this last and highest condi- 

 tion? Is this magazined force left to go wholly to waste by the 

 death and decomposition of the plant-eaters ? Just the contrary: 

 an extensive system of flesh-eaters was instituted which should 

 live upon it, and continue it in action in sustaining animal lifa 

 among successive tribes. The flow is taken at its heiglit, and 

 the power is employed again and again, and made gradually 

 to ebb. What is left as the refuse is inorganic matter — the ex- 

 creted carbonic acid, water, and excrements, with bones or any 

 stony secretions present. Thus the flow starts at the inorganic 

 kingdom, and returns again to the inorganic. Moreover, in the 

 class of quadrupeds, (mammals,) the flesh of the herbivores 

 (cattle) is among the means by which the animal type is borne 

 to the higher grade of the carnivores. The true carnivores, be- 

 sides, take the best of meat. Whales may live on the mfenor 

 animals of the sea • but the large forest flesh-eaters take beef 

 and the like. ' 



There is another admirable point in this scheme. The death 

 and decomposition of plant-eaters would have rendered the wa- 

 ters and air, locally at least, destructive to life. It is well known 

 that it is necessary in an aquarium to have flesh-eaters along 

 f ith the plant-eaters and plants. And when in this way the 

 living species are w^ell balanced, the water wfll remain pure, and 

 the animals live on indefinitely. If not so balanced, if an ani- 

 mal is left to decay the waters become foul, and often every- 

 tliing dies. Putrefaction and noxious chemical combinations 

 follow death, because, in life, the constituents, carbon, hydrogen, 

 r^'trogen, and oxygen, are in a constrained state, at the furthest 

 remove from what chemical forces alone can produce ; and hence, 

 ^vhen the restraint is taken off at death, the elements fly into 

 new conditions according to their afanities. IN ow animals, dying 

 yearly by myriads are met at death by an arrangement which 

 roakes the dead contribute anew to animal life as its aliment, 

 a^d in this very procees the flesh ultimately comes out innocu- 

 ous, and is at last so far changed to the inorganic condition as 

 to be the best of fertilizers for plants. Part of the process of 

 getting rid of the great fleshy carcasses, consists m their minute 

 subdivision by the feeding of larves of insects, and, further an 

 infinitesimal division of the insect as the food of the infusoria,— 

 ^Hch again may become the nutriment of larger animals, to go 

 tHe rounds once more. But the final result is, as stated, jpiant- 

 /ood— largely through the processes of digestion and excretion 

 but part through thi decomposition of animals that are too small 

 ^d readily dried up to prove offensive. 



