lysis gives us no information, are
contained in the wheat grain. For example, there is woody matter or
cellulose, and a certain quantity of sugar and fat. It would be
possible to obtain a substance similar to albumin, starch, saccharine,
and fatty matters, and cellulose, by treating the stem, leaves, and
root in a similar fashion, but the cellulose would be in far larger
proportion. Straw, in fact, which consists of the dry stem and leaves
of the wheat plant, is almost wholly made up of cellulose. Besides
this, however, it contains a certain proportion of mineral bodies,
among them, pure flint or silica; and, if you should ever see a wheat
rick burnt, you will find more or less of this silica, in a glassy
condition, in the embers. In the living plant, all these bodies are
combined with a large proportion of water, or are dissolved, or
suspended in that fluid. The relative quantity of water is much
greater in the stem and leaves than in the seed.

Everybody has seen a common fowl. It is an active creature which runs
about and sometimes flies. It has a body covered with feathers,
provided with two wings and two legs, and ending at one end in a neck
terminated by a head with a beak, between the two parts of which the
mouth is placed. The hen lays eggs, each of which is inclosed in a
hard shell. If you break an egg the contents flow out and are seen to
consist of the colorless glairy "white" and the yellow "yolk." If the
white is collected by itself in water and then heated it becomes
turbid, forming a white solid, very similar to the vegetable albumin,
which is called animal albumin.

If the yolk is beaten up with water, no starch nor cellulose is
obtained from it, but there will be plenty of fatty and some
saccharine matter, besides substances more or less similar to albumin
and gluten.

The feathers of the fowl are chiefly composed of horn; if they are
stripped off and the body is boiled for a long time, the water will be
found to contain a quantity of gelatin, which sets into a jelly as it
cools; and the body will fall to pieces, the bones and the flesh
separating from one another. The bones consist almost entirely of a
substance which yields gelatin when it is boiled in water, impregnated
with a large quantity of salts of lime, just as the wood of the wheat
stem is impregnated with silica. The flesh, on the other hand, will
contain albumin, and some other substances which are very similar to
albumin, termed fibrin