Organic  Nutrition. 
391 
animal  pining  from  cold  evaporates  with  the  breath,  as  the  spirit 
would  pass  from  wine  in  an  uncorked  bottle.  The  comfort  of 
our  stock,  therefore,  is  in  unison  with  their  master's  profit.  As 
to  their  food,  practice,  as  Boussingault  himself,  no  mean  chemist, 
frankly  says,  “ has  got  the  start  of  theory ; and  I own,”  he  adds, 
“ with  perfect  humility,  that  I think  its  conclusions  are  in  general 
greatly  to  be  preferred.”  Still,  animal  chemistry  has  made  great 
advances,  and  does  at  least  explain  much.  Of  vegetable  chemistry 
as  much  can  scarcely  be  said.  In  the  words  of  its  able  ex- 
ponent, the  late  Dr.  Fownes,  speaking  at  the  premature  close 
of  his  labours,  “The  chemistry  of  vegetable  life  is  of  a very  high 
and  mysterious  order,  and  the  glimpses  occasionally  obtained  of 
its  general  nature  are  few  and  rare.” 
It  seems  at  first  strange  that  the  chemistry  of  the  lower  form 
of  life  should  be  more  backward  than  of  the  higher — that  vege- 
table nutrition  should  be  darker  than  animal : but  Liebig’s  dis- 
coveries afford  us  a reason.  Animals,  he  has  proved,  find  much 
of  their  substance  ready  made  in  the  vegetables  which  they  con- 
sume. Besides,  animals  and  vegetables  belong  both  to  organic 
chemistry.  The  two  substances  are,  as  it  were,  of  the  same 
realm,  subject  to  the  same  laws.  But  vegetables  have  the  task  of 
transmuting  the  dead  elements  into  living  matter.  They  bridge 
the  gulf  between  the  mineral  and  the  organised  world.  Now 
this  union  has  not  yet  been  effected  between  the  two  kinds  of 
chemistry.  In  mineral,  or  more  correctly,  inorganic  chemistry, 
if  we  can  decompose  a substance,  we  can  generally  also  compose 
it.  If  we  can  sever  water  into  its  two  gases,  we  can  form  water 
again  by  uniting  those  gases.  But  we  cannot  deal  so  with  oil: 
we  can  only  unmake  it ; we  cannot  form  it  anew,  by  blending  its 
elements.  That  task  is  left  to  the  hidden  powers  working  in 
plants.  Again,  ammonia,  the  very  substance  we  prize  so  highly 
and  purchase  so  dearly,  is  compounded  of  two  gases,  very  common 
and  very  attainable  ; for  one  of  them,  hydrogen,  forms  one-ninth 
of  all  water,  and  the  other,  nitrogen,  three-fourths  of  the  very 
air  that  we  breathe.  Yet,  because  organic  chemistry  cannot 
put  together  these  two  gases,  in  which  all  nature  lives,  and  so 
form  ammonia,  our  ships  are  compelled  to  double  Cape  Horn 
and  fetch  guano  from  the  Pacific  Ocean.  If,  then,  we  cannot 
compound  the  simplest  organic  substance,  by  mixing  its  two  or 
three  lifeless  constituents  in  our  vessels,  being  thus  confessedly 
ignorant  of  the  laws  under  which  they  combine,  what  wonder 
that  we  should  be  unable  by  any  chemical  reasoning  to  perform 
the  same  task  in  the  garden  or  in  the  field.  It  seems  reasonable, 
therefore,  that  we  should  earlier  scan  the  laws  of  vegetable  than 
of  animal  nutrition  ; understand,  that  is,  the  food  of  beasts  sooner 
than  the  food  of  plants. 
