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Annual Report of the 
accident, but by natural methods and natural laws. The material 
for this department is obtained partlj r from the mineral kingdom, 
but mostly from the atmosphere. This department, top, like all 
others in this great factor}^, is furnished with all the powers and 
appliances uecessary for its work. Hence the soil is endowed with 
powers of absorption by which it takes up gaseous matter rising 
through the rocks from beneath, draws in what atmospheric air is 
necessary, and absorbs from the atmosphere resting on it, as well 
as from what is passing through it, what moisture and gaseous 
matter it may contain. The soil thus prepared by natural methods 
is not an aggregation of raw material merely, drawn from these 
different sources, but a bundle of forces by which this raw material 
is worked up into a form of matter out of which vegetable life starts 
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and from which vegetable matter is drawn. What is the nature 
and form of this matter out of which vegetable life starts, and what 
are the forces employed in starting it? It .will pay us to spend a 
few moments here with scientific men. 
In tracing back the history of a plant through its organism to 
the material of which it is composed, it is discovered that all plants 
originate in the same kind of matter. This matter is composed of 
what is called the four organic elements, namely: Oxygen, carbon, 
hydrogen, and nitrogen. These elements arc formed in the follow¬ 
ing compounds, namely: Water, carbonic acid and ammonia. 
These compounds, when brought together under certain conditions, 
give rise to a still more complex body of matter, from which arises 
the phenomena of life. This complex body of matter, formed of 
water, carbonic acid and ammonia, is called by Huxley—one of 
ths deepest thinkers of the day—Protoplasm, or the Physical 
Basis of Life. By Haeckel, who is not any behind him as an analy¬ 
zer of natural phenomena, it is called Germinal matter, that is, that 
kind of matter in which the germs of vegetable life are formed. 
Others still more emphatic, call it the “Matter of Life.*' We find 
this same kind of matter treasured up in the seeds of all plants to be 
deposited in the soil again as germinal matter. But from the fact 
that all plants rise out of this kind of matter, and that we find 
plants growing now where no seed has been sown, and where it is 
hardly possible they could have found their wa} r , we are forced to 
this conclusion, that under proper conditions this ‘matter of life’ 
is formed in the soil by natural processes, and that in the early for- 
