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The function performed in the vital process of the graminivora by these substances is indicated in a very clear and convincing manner, when we take into consideration the very small relative amount of the carbon which these animals consume in the nitrogenised constituents of their food, which bears no proportion whatever to the oxygen absorbed through the skin and lungs.
If this fertilising mud owed this property to nitrogenised matters; what enormous beds of animal and vegetable exuviae and remains ought to exist in the mountains of Africa, in heights extending beyond the limits of perpetual snow, where no bird, no animal finds food, from the absence of all vegetation!
Chemical researches have shown, that all such parts of vegetables as can afford nutriment to animals contain certain constituents which are rich in nitrogen; and the most ordinary experience proves that animals require for their support and nutrition less of these parts of plants in proportion as they abound in the nitrogenised constituents.
This would amount, in 100 years, to 2,200 pounds weight. In Hungary, as I remarked in a former Letter, tobacco and wheat have been grown upon the same field for centuries, without any supply of nitrogenised manure. Is it possible that the nitrogen essential to, and entering into, the composition of these crops, could have been drawn from the soil?
This is one of the nitrogenised compounds which serves for the nutrition of animals, and has been named vegetable fibrine. The juice of grapes is especially rich in this constituent, but it is most abundant in the seeds of wheat, and of the cerealia generally.
These three nitrogenised compounds, vegetable fibrine, albumen, and caseine, are the true nitrogenised constituents of the food of graminivorous animals; all other nitrogenised compounds occurring in plants, are either rejected by animals, as in the case of the characteristic principles of poisonous and medicinal plants, or else they occur in the food in such very small proportion, that they cannot possibly contribute to the increase of mass in the animal body.
There is added, therefore, by means of these compounds, to the nitrogenised constituents of food, a certain amount of carbon; or, as in the case of butter, of carbon and hydrogen; that is, an excess of elements, which cannot possibly be employed in the production of blood, because the nitrogenised substances contained in the food already contain exactly the amount of carbon which is required for the production of fibrine and albumen.
The most recent and exact researches have established as a universal fact, to which nothing yet known is opposed, that the nitrogenised constituents of vegetable food have a composition identical with that of the constituents of the blood. No nitrogenised compound, the composition of which differs from that of fibrine, albumen, and caseine, is capable of supporting the vital process in animals.
The blood of the young animal, its muscular fibre, cellular tissue, nervous matter, and bones, must have derived their origin from the nitrogenised constituent of milk the caseine; for butter and sugar of milk contain no nitrogen.
In the nitrogenised constituents of his food, therefore, the horse receives rather less than the fifth part of the carbon which his organism requires for the support of the respiratory process; and we see that the wisdom of the Creator has added to his food the four-fifths which are wanting, in various forms, as starch, sugar, &c. with which the animal must be supplied, or his organism will be destroyed by the action of the oxygen.
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