MR. KARKEEK, AT ST. AUSTELL FARMERS’ CLUB. 245 
attended. Some implements were also shewn on the ground, se- 
veral of which were considered to exhibit valuable improvements. 
Mr. Karkeek, at the request of the chairman, then commenced 
the delivery of a lecture which was illustrated by a large num- 
ber of tables. We offer a brief abstract of it. 
LECTURE ON ORGANIC CHEMISTRY, 
In its application to Physiology , and the Rearing and Feeding 
of Animals, by Mr. Karkeek. 
He began with an account of the principal elementary sub- 
stances, such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, 
phosphorus, with a few of the alkaline, earthy, and metallic bodies 
of which all organized substances were composed, shewing how 
these — moulded into being by the hand of creative wisdom, and 
endowed with the mysterious and incomprehensible principle of 
life — became converted into the endless race of animals and vege- 
tables. There was this difference, he said, in the assimilating 
powers of vegetables and animals, — that a plant could grow at the 
expense of the elements by which it was surrounded, and where 
no living substance ever previously existed ; but animals, on the 
contrary, could only exist upon matter previously organized, either 
by plants or other living beings. The lecturer then shewed how, 
by the union of those simple elementary bodies, according to certain 
laws which he briefly explained, proximate elements were formed, 
which were divided into two groups, the azotized, and non- 
azotized, — vegetable, fibrine, albumen, casein, animal fibrine, and 
albumen, constituting the first group, and fat, gum, sugar, starch, 
&c., constituting the latter. In the first there were four of the ulti- 
mate elements, while in the latter, only three, the presence or 
absence of the azote or nitrogen constituting the difference. 
He then went on to shew that vegetable and animal fibrine, al- 
bumen, and casein, were composed of the same ultimate elements, 
and, in fact, were identical in their chemical composition. This 
fact he illustrated by numerous tables, containing the analyses 
of these different substances by Playfair, Boussingault, Liebig, 
and others. 
He next explained some of the laws, vital and chemical, which 
regulated the metamorphoses of these elements, and of the inter- 
change of atoms which occurs between the blood and the structures 
in the process of nutrition, plainly and distinctly shewing the 
farmer, that, in the rearing of young animals, substances rich in 
nitrogen, such as peas, beans, oats, barley, &c., — these articles of 
VOL XVII. K k 
