Chap, vii.] ULTIMATE PHENOMENA OF ANIMAL NUTRITION. US 



deprived of life. It is thus, for exaauple, that muscular flesL 

 and blood putrefy with great rapidity when brought into contact 

 with the organic particles called miasmata, and that we obtain, 

 by condensation, aqueous vapour fiom the atmosphere of marshes, 

 or from confined air vitiated by agglomerations of men or 

 animals.^ 



We have spoken, in one of our first chapters, of the great 

 affinity shown for water by ailbumino'idal substances. We conse- 

 quently comprehend what extreme importance this property has 

 in the scheme of nutrition. It is, in effect, one of the principal 

 conditions of absorption and assimilation. In reality, all the 

 anatomical elements of animals, even of those "which live in the 

 air, are aquatic organisms. They live in the plasmas and 

 blastemas, as marine animals live in the \^ater. They have their 

 inner liquid mediums, which are their safeguards from the 

 desti-uctive action of the exterior aerian medium. It is in these 

 inner mediums that they take their nutriments and throw off 

 their secretions. Also all the animal membranes lose their vital 

 properties by drying, and the aerian animals, as well as the 

 aiquatic animals, can only respire through the intermediation of 

 tissues incessantly lubrified. 



After what we have already said of the chemical composition 

 of animals and plants, as well as of nutrition in general, it is 

 self-evident that the ultimate phenomena of nutrition, already sc 

 analogous in the two organic kingdoms, are identical in the 

 animals called tierhivoruus and in those called carnivorous. There 

 is only a difference in the constitution of the apparatus charged 

 with the preparation of the alimentary materials. We know 

 besides that many animals are herbivorous or cairnivorous indif- 

 ferently ; and we shall see further on that the transformation of 

 a herbivorous animal into a carnivorous one is only a pastime for 

 the physiologist. This transformation takes place spontiMieously 

 under the influence of abstinence. Then the urine of herbivorous 



1 Oh. Robin, loc. cU., Introduction, pp. 195 — 199. 



