I9 6 THE FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE. 
But without doubt what promises to be the most 
important as well as the most useful product of coal-tar 
is albumen, which Professor Lilienfeld has succeeded 
in obtaining from it. Albumen, with starchy, sugary, 
and acid substances, constitutes the basis of both ani- 
mal and vegetable foods. An ounce of pure albumen 
has twenty times the nourishing power of the same 
weight of meat. It will nearly equal in this respect 
a peck of potatoes, besides having the quality of not 
interfering with digestion even though eaten exclu- 
sively for months at a time. 
Wonderful as it may appear to us that nauseous, 
black, ill-smelling coal-tar can be made to yield de- 
licious and delicate essences, such as caffein, which is 
the essential principle of tea and coffee, artificial vanil- 
lin, exactly equivalent to the crystallized product of 
the vanilla bean, and the essence of bitter almonds, 
yet when we find that it can also be transformed into 
the most wholesome and nutritious of palatable food, 
this seems little short of miraculous, and to call for 
the exercise of a power fully as wonderful as any as.- 
cribed to magician or fairy, almost in appearance as 
great as that which could turn stones into bread. 
Think, then, how much we owe to these plants 
which lived and died so long ago! If they had been 
able to reason, perhaps they might have said that 
they did not seem of much use in the world. They 
had no pretty flowers, and there was no one to ad- 
'mire their beautiful green foliage except a few croak- 
ing reptiles, and little crickets and grasshoppers; and 
they lived and died all on one spot, generation after 
