95 



holds : they contain, in common, sugar, mucus, jelly, 

 colouring, and other principles, gluten, fibrin, oils, 

 resins, and extractives. The functions of animals 

 and plants are similarly closely analogous. 



Animals take in their food by the agency of the 

 mouth, and prepare it for digestion by various degrees 

 of mastication or attrition, as in the gizzard of birds. 

 In this they differ from plants, but these have this 

 compensation, they imbibe their food in a fluid form, 

 and consequently in a state of the finest possible divi- 

 sion. Animal and vegetable remains are their com- 

 mon food, plants having this superiority over animals, 

 that, as they only absorb the soluble and finer parts, 

 they are not obliged to throw off the grosser consti- 

 tuents vrhich appear in the excrement of animals, 

 though there are excretions given off from the roots 

 of plants differing probably in every genus. In the 

 animal stomach the food undergoes an extensive 

 change, being reduced to a pulp of greater specific 

 gravity, and being altered entirely both in taste and 

 smell. In the lymphatics of plants, which may be 

 considered their primary organ of digestion, their 

 food or lymph undergoes a change precisely similar ; 

 its colour and flavour are altered, and its specific 

 gravity increased. 



From the stomach the animal's food passes into 

 the intestines, is there subjected to the action of the 

 bile, and converted into chyle, the nutritive part, and 



