Although it is true that these substances form the proper and most important constituents of our daily food; yet, in order to enjoy the desired result, we must not partake of them in their primary forms; they can actually feed our body only when they are combined together in a peculiar, wondrous manner.
In the next chapter it may be seen how nature first must combine these substances before they are presented to us as proper food; and it will also be seen, that we receive them sometimes in altogether different forms and combinations; for example, in the mother's milk, when we eat the above-named elements in the forms of caseine (cheese), butyrine (butter), sugar of milk, salt, and water.
These latter names have a more savory sound, have they not?
CHAPTER IV.
HOW NATURE PREPARES OUR FOOD.
In the preceding article it was stated, that the food of the child which lives on mother's milk, consists in its primary elements of peculiar substances. These are principally oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen; three gases to which may be added a large quantity of carbon, or, what is the same, coal. Besides this wondrous mixture of air and coal, the mother's milk contains still other elements, but in a smaller proportion. In every-day life many of them are unfamiliar; for example, natron, calcium, magnesia, chlorine, and fluor; the others, however, are known to every one; viz., iron, sulphur, and phosphorus. All these strange ingredients nature has carefully transformed into milk. For in their primary state, and even in various chemical combinations that may be produced artificially, they would be little adapted for the purpose. It is therefore essentially necessary that nature herself should make them ready for us. This she does by letting them pass first into the vegetable state, and changing them afterwards into new forms.
The plant feeds on primary chemical elements; or, to state it more correctly, the plant is nothing but transformed primary elements! Not before the transformation of these elements into plants are the elements adapted for food for animals and men.
Moreover, all that man eats must first have been in the vegetable state. Now, it is true that man also eats the flesh, fat, and eggs of animals; but whence have the animals meat and eggs? Only from the plants they consume.
There is a remarkable succession of transformations in nature. The primary elements nourish the plant; the plant nourishes the animal; and both, plant and animal, form the nourishment of man.