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NIMATED nature includes, besides animals, all plants, by which are 
meant in this connection the living organisms that constitute the 
vegetable kingdom, such as trees, shrubs, herbs, vegetables, grasses, 
ferns, etc. It will be recollected that there are three great “king¬ 
doms” in nature —the mineral, the vegetable and the animal; and 
of these the one we are at present concerned with holds the middle 
place. Plants are living things, and the superior vegetables approach 
so nearly to what are generally considered inferior classes of the 
animal kingdom, that scientists are at a loss to. determine the exact 
dividing line. On the other hand, it is well known that certain 
minerals are remains of former vegetation. Hence, in nature one 
kingdom merges into another by gradations so fine that where one begins 
and the other ends remains a sort of mysterious secret eluding the analytical 
powers of man. Vegetable life, like animal life, is a continued succession of renewal and 
decay, of assimilation and elimination. Growth may therefore be said to be the result of 
the assimilating processes in excess; maturity, of a balance of the assimilating and elimi¬ 
nating; and decay, of an excess of the eliminating processes. Vegetables derive their 
support from the atmosphere, as well as from the soil, and, like animals, contain a far 
greater proportion of water than of anything else. The other ingredients are carbon, 
derived from the carbonic acid gas imbibed from the air; often a little nitrogen; and 
generally a small quantity of mineral substances absorbed in liquid form through the 
roots. 
CHEMISTRY OF PLANTS. 
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Plants are now generally recognized as containing about eighteen of the sixty-five 
primary elements known in nature, and these are all contributed by the vegetable king¬ 
dom to the support of animal life. It is equally pleasing and instructive to learn, through 
the scientific principles of the chemistry of plants, how and of what materials the beautiful 
forms that we see around us are made, as well as what useful properties they possess. 
Thereby we obtain an unerring guide to the most wholesome food for ourselves and our 
domestic animals; and a discriminating sense of the proportion in which the different 
kinds should be used. Hence we know that it is unwise to partake of the same plants too 
continuously, frequent changes being a fixed law of their healthful action on the human 
system. By a knowledge of the chemical components of the human frame on the one 
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