EMILY.
Vegetation, then, seems to be the method which Nature employs to prepare the food of animals?
MRS. B.
That is certainly its principal object. The vegetable creation does not exhibit more wisdom in that admirable system of organisation, by which it is enabled to answer its own immediate ends of preservation, nutrition, and propagation, than in its grand and ultimate object of forming those arrangements and combinations of principles, which are so well adapted for the nourishment of animals.
EMILY.
But I am very curious to know whence vegetables obtain those principles which form their immediate materials?
MRS. B.
This is a point on which we are yet so much in the dark, that I cannot hope fully to satisfy your curiosity; but what little I know on this subject, I will endeavour to explain to you.
The soil, which, at first view, appears to be the aliment of vegetables, is found, on a closer investigation, to be little more than the channel through which they receive their nourishment; so that it is very possible to rear plants without any earth or soil.
CAROLINE.