Thomas County cat. [volume] (Colby, Kan.) 1885-1891, 1888-10-04
WONDERFUL THINGS.
They Arc Found in Nature All
Around Us
A Few Thoughts for the Thoughtful
The Marvellous Operations and Re-
suits of Vegetable and AMI
NAL Chemistry.

ave want thinking souls-we want
them" so wrote Samuel Taylor Cole
ridge. Now, l wish (says cOrre-
spondent) to make few remarks
which may serve as thoughts for the
thoughtful, and cause them, in this
world of wonders, to awake to the
wonders which surround them.
Let us consider for a moment the
vegetable world. First of all, it is the
only organism that can convert the
inorganic world into life. Neither
man nor beast can find nOurishment di-
rectly from the earth. The beast finds
its food in the vegetable, converting it
into flesh, which, again, affords food to
man and to all carnivOrOus animals.
What marvellous chemistry do we
thus find in the vegetable, kindling the
inorganic into life!-hOw subtle, how
completely beyond our ken, no matter
how keen our investigation. Nor is
the animal chemistry less subtle, less
marvellous, in converting the vegetable
and how like, if We may not even say
how identical, are the constituents on
which vegetable life feeds, and yet
what marvelously different results!
Think of the variety of flowers and
fruits-some sweet-scented, as the rose
and the violet; others disagreeable, as
the garlic, the dunk-tree and the
wormwoOd. If we take mere bud of
a white rose tree and insert it into the
stem of a red rose, forthwith it be-
comes incorporated in it. The root
sends nOurishment throughout the
whole tree; but the same sap, passing
up the different stems, results re-
spectively in red and white roses.
What a marvellous change the sap has
undergone by only travelling up differ
ent kind of wood! Think of the hard
stones or nuts that are found in
the fruit of treeS-the peach, the wal
nut, and the cOcOa-nut The CONVEX
sion of sap into these hard nuts is in
deed piece of wonderful vegetable
chemistry.
Think, too, of them any useful medic
inal, as well as hurtful and poisonous,
plants that abound in every cline; all,
remember, resulting from the con-
version of nearly the same ingredients
into the diversely different products.
In a dry and thirsty land. too. where
no water is, the cocoa-nut fills its shell
with an abundance of delicious fluid.
We can not tell how it is done.
Now let us turn our thoughts to the
animal world. How wonderfully are
animals built up-the lower, by the
eating of vegetable food; the higher,
by the eating of the vegetable con-
verted into flesh. Think of the won
derful animal-chemistry that can con-
vert green food into blood, flesh, hair,
horn--into all the various require
ments of the several parts of the body,
and that without any will exerted by
the animal to produce the several re-
suits. 1t is done whether the animal
is asleep or awake. 1t is done un-
consciously by the animal. What a
variety VI 1OOO stuO Urluk uldu DC
casionally takes at meal. and yet the
process of digestion separates the
mixed mass into its several different
results, producing hair. horn and bone.
What a wonderful conversion is that
of vegetable matter into the ivory
tusks of the elephant and the antlers
of the deer and stag! We can not find
any material in hardness and elasticity
equal to that of the tusk of the ele-
plant for the making of billiard
balls. What wonderful product is
the shell of the eggs of birds, and
the shells of Holsters and crabs-pro-
duced simply from what they severally
eat! Wonder reigns everywhere-in
the air, the water and the earth. Have
my readers ever allowed themselves
20 wonder at the feathers of birds?
How gorgeous and yet how artistic are
the feathers in the tail of the peacock!
All the feathers. remember, are made
from what the bird eats Again, life
abounds in every variety Of form. and
exists under every variety Of circum-