352 On the Physical Geography of Hindostan. 



grow round the falls of the Nile will drink it in by their 

 leaves ; the cedars of Lebanon will take of it to add to their 

 stature ; the cocoa-nuts of Tahiti will grow rapidly upon it ; 

 and the palms and bananas of Japan will change it into 

 flowers. The oxygen we are breathing was distilled for us 

 some short time ago by the magnolias of Susquehama, and 

 the great trees that skirt the Orinoco and the Amazon — the 

 giant rhododendrons of the Himalayas contributed to it, and 

 the roses and myrtles of Cashmere, the cinnamon tree of 

 Ceylon, and the forests older than the flood, buried deep in 

 the heart of Africa far behind the Mountains of the Moon. 

 The rain we see descending was thawed for us out of the 

 icebergs which have watched the Polar star for ages ; and the 

 lotus lilies have soaked up from the Nile and exhaled as va- 

 pour snows that rested on the summits of the Alps." " The 

 atmosphere,"" says Maun, " which forms the outer surface of 

 the habitable world, is a vast reservoir, into which the supply 

 of food designed for living creatures is thrown, — or, in one 

 word, it is itself the food in its simple form of all living 

 creatures. The animal grinds down the fibre and the tissue 

 of the plant, or the nutritious store that has been laid up 

 within its cells, and converts these into the substance of 

 which its own organs are composed. The plant acquires the 

 organs and nutritious store thus yielded up as food to the 

 animal, from the invulnerable air surrounding it." But 

 animals are furnished with the means of locomotion and of 

 seizure — they can approach their food, and lay hold of and 

 swallow it ; plants must await till their food comes to them. 

 No solid particles find access to their frames ; the restless 

 ambient air, which rushes past them loaded with the carbon, 

 the hydrogen, the oxygen, the water — everything they need 

 in shape of supplies, — is constantly at hand to minister to 

 their wants, not only to afford them food in due season, but 

 in the shape and fashion in which alone it can avail them. 



