From this point of view the germs of putre faction cease to be mere interlopers, parasites, breeders of corruption. They come to occupy a recognized and legitimate place in the consti tution of nature. Nay, not only do they fill a recognized place, but they discharge a necessary function, they play, indeed, a beneficent part in the drama of life. The world of lifeless matter consists—let it be put roughly and broadly—of a number of elements—carbon, oxygen, hydro gen, nitrogen, sodium, potassium, phosphorus, sulphur, &c.--associated together in various ways, oxygen and hydrogen as water, oxygen and nitrogen as atmospheric air, potassium, sodium, phosphorus, in various combinations as salts of various kinds. Now these substances are just such as plants, the lower animals, and man require for their nourishment. But neither the lower animals nor man can take these in organic substances and convert them into the living matter of their bodies. A diet of phos phate of lime, chloride of sodium, and potassium, charcoal, and so on, with a liberal allowance of air and water, though containing the same ele mentary substances as are found built up into muscle, nerve, and bone in a human body, is but as the sand of the desert to a hungry man. Six feet of earth may be a liberal allowance for his grave, but not for his repast. Not so with the plant. From the earth in which it is rooted, from the air to which it stretches its arms, it draws just the same elements as have been named, and builds them up into much more complex forms, into highly organized sub stances. On these complex combinations of the same original elements animals and man can live. The ox crops the herbage and builds up in its own body, into still higher forms, the organic substances the plant yields to it; and man in turn derives nourishment from the substances the plant and the lower animal pre pare for him, composed though they be of the same materials which, as beggarly elements, are practically valueless for him. And now, what
would happen suppose there was ever a build ing up and never a breaking down? The plant, which is the first workman in nature's great manufactory, which performs the first stage in the process of converting the raw material into the finished article—the plant cannot live on boiled mutton, nor yet can it feed on the bodies of its dead companions. It is the elements it seeks. But if it is perpetually building up the elements into organic substances its own supply of nourishment will some day be exhausted, it will cease to live. If balance is to be main tained, the process by which organized bodies are broken down into elements must keep pace with the process by which elements are built up into organized bodies. Death is neces sary to life. This breaking-down process the lower animals and men to some extent accom plish. A man eats bread and meat, he takes into his body complex substances, he transforms them into material for his use ; they abide in his body for a longer or shorter time, give him the means of obtaining heat and energy, and are then cast out, as carbonic acid gas, water, urea, and salts--practically restored, that is to say, to their elementary form, broken down from their complex state. But animals and men die. Their bodies are masses of complex,. organic substances, in that form useless for any practical part in the cycle of life. But now, to sweep away this useless mass an invisible host of busy workers descend from the air, who take possession of the body, send detachments far and wide into its inmost recesses, and rest not day nor night till they have rent asunder from one another the wondrously piled mole cules of albumen, of fat, of nerve, of blood, till they have broken down the walls and torn from one another the stones of the tabernacle of flesh--till they have restored again to earth and air that which years before the plant took from them. No putrefaction without organisms; and thus life presides over the work of death.