The smoke is only invisible, because the combustion is
so perfect. The steam is plain enough in our breaths on a frosty
morning; and an over-driven horse will show us, on a larger scale, the
cloud that is always arising from own bodies."
"Man walks, then, not only in a vain show, but wrapped in an uncelestial
aureole of his own material exhalations. A great mist of gases and of
vapor rises day and night from the whole realm of living nature. The
water and the carbonic acid which animals exhale become the food of
plants, whose leaves are at once lungs and mouths. The vegetable world
reverses the breathing process of the animal creation, restoring the
elements which that has combined and rendered effete for its own
purposes, to their original condition. The salt-water ocean is a great
aquarium. The air ocean in which we live is a 'Wardian case,' of larger
dimensions."
It is found that the simple elements will not nourish the body in their
natural state, but only when organized, either as vegetable or animal
food; and, to the dismay of the Grahamite or vegetarian school, it is
now established by chemists that animal and vegetable food contain the
same elements, and in nearly the same proportions.
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