FINAL DEDUCTIONS, 



91 



engineer, a large part of the initial stock by the pro- 

 duction of energies that she does not want and cannot 

 utilize. She goes directly to her goal. Why should 

 not man ? He has but to imitate her processes. 



Mysterious as seem these processes and methods, 

 however, and wonderful as seem their results when 

 compared with the crude ways of the engineer and 

 the man of science, we at least know something of 

 them, and are even familiar with many facts relating to 

 them. The facts are these : Every living creature 

 throughout the animal kingdom is a machine which 

 takes into its internal furnace, or whatever it may 

 prove to be, its fuel, its " food," composed of vegetable 

 matter or, like the body receiving it, itself directly de- 

 rived from vegetation ; and by a chemical process in 

 what the chemist calls the wet way " it consumes this 

 food, the resulting products of this chemical action being 

 such as, dissolved in the blood, may be converted into 

 brain, nerve, muscle, and fat ; and by later combustion 

 and transformations at low temperature it may produce 

 heat certainly, electricity probably, often light, and 

 always mechanical power. The composition of this 

 fuel is known to be principally famiHar chemical ele- 

 ments mingled with the rarer in minute proportions. 

 The hydrocarbons, water, and a httle lime, phosphorus, 

 sulphur, and other minerals, such as iron, constitute 

 the food of all living creatures. 



Every process involved is carried on at "blood-heat " 

 in the higher animals, and at much lower temperatures 

 in the cold-blooded " creatures ; and all parts of the 

 system are retained at substantially the same tempera- 

 ture at all times. All heat is thus the result of low- 

 temperature combustion ; all light and electricity are 



