So that, you see, the waste products of the
animal economy, the effete materials which are continually being thrown
off by all living beings, in the form of organic matters, are
constantly replaced by supplies of the necessary repairing and
rebuilding materials drawn from the plants, which in their turn
manufacture them, so to speak, by a mysterious combination of those
same inorganic materials.
Let us trace out the history of the Horse in another direction. After
a certain time, as the result of sickness or disease, the effect of
accident, or the consequence of old age, sooner or later, the animal
dies. The multitudinous operations of this beautiful mechanism flag in
their performance, the Horse loses its vigour, and after passing
through the curious series of changes comprised in its formation and
preservation, it finally decays, and ends its life by going back into
that inorganic world from which all but an inappreciable fraction of
its substance was derived. Its bones become mere carbonate and
phosphate of lime; the matter of its flesh, and of its other parts,
becomes, in the long run, converted into carbonic acid, into water, and
into ammonia.
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