AMERICAN HOME GARDEN. 59 



CHAPTER IV. 



Sources of Vegetation. — Elements of Veget.ible and Animal Life. — Ma- 

 nuring and Manures, Composts, etc. 



SOURCES OF VEGETATION. 



As all plants sprang originally from the eartli, were watered 

 by the rain, and suiTOunded by the air, we may properly ex- 

 pect to find in these, or some of them, all the elements of which 

 plants consist ; and such Chemistry shows us is the fact. 

 Plants receive from continually renewed, and therefore ex- 

 haustless som'ccs in the earth and air, through the water which 

 dissolves or absorbs them, those elements which each variety 

 of plant secretes and appropriates according to its particular 

 natm-e and wants, aided or modified by the influence of light 

 and heat. These same elements, the constituents of vegeta- 

 l)les, form also, with certain peculiar modifications, the com- 

 plete circle of the elements of animal life. Milk is the only 

 perfect and entire compound of the essential elements of ani- 

 mal support and growth ; but those elements already existed 

 in the grasses from which the milk was secreted, and are de- 

 rived even still more richly from certain other vegetables and 

 grains, receiving from them in the process of secretion their 

 own peculiar taste or odor, or that of other things mixed with 

 them, as the wild onion, etc. " All flesh is grass" in .some- 

 thing more than a merely figm'ative or poetical sense. 



Animal digestion and partial decomposition by fermenta- 

 tion are the common means by which the various elements, orig- 

 inally derived from their natm-al sources through the action of 

 the vegetalile world, are prepared to be returned to it, that they 

 may be gathered in new forms, to be again consumed, and again 

 returned ; and again regathered, in the incessant circle of 

 chano-es which shall end only with time. 



