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The consumption of coffee in the United States is now so very large and increasing, it is of great importance that a regular supply should be depended upon. From the present sources, it appears to be very doubtful even at considerably increased prices. The only other part of the world where its cultivation might be introduced with a probability of its increasing so as to supply the demand, is the coast of Africa. At Liberia, the first attempt at cultivation has been very successful, and there cannot be a doubt of its being made a profitable crop, and in time a source of great wealth.

At the time when colonization of the free blacks upon that coast occupies the attention of the true philanthropists, it is very important to know that there is an article so congenial to the soil and so easy of cultivation, that will always find a sure and ready sale not only in the United States, but in Europe, without fear of competition from other countries. One of the great objections to colonizing Africa, has been, not knowing what kind of agriculture would be immediately successful, at a moderate outlay of capital and give an available and valuable export. This is now settled beyond a doubt, and it should be an additional incentive to the true friends of the blacks, as well as of our country, to make every exertion to promote the colonization of Africa. This cannot be done to any great extent by private individuals alone, but should receive the assistance of government; first, by establishing a line of steamships to take passengers at a low rate, and also by annual appropriations; if not by the General Government, then by the State Governments. Such measures would do more in a short time to put a stop to the slave trade, than all Great Britain has done the past twenty years, at the expense of millions of treasure, and the sacrifice of thousands of valuable lives. It would in time be the means of civilizing Africa, thereby working out the destinics of Providence, as it is very evident that it is only by the free blacks from this country, that Africa can ever be civilized. Besides, opening the only way for the final emancipation of the slaves in the United States, as it is very certain that this can never take place generally, unless a large proportion can be induced and assisted to emigrate to the land of their fathers.

Since the foregoing was prepared, some particular information has been received, from a first rate source at Antwerp, to 22d October, which very nearly corresponds with the estimates of production and consumption, viz:- Production of the world, 236,200 tons, or 529 millions lbs. Consumption, based on the deliveries of 1849, 270,000 tons, or 605 millions lbs.

The chief difference being in the consumption of the United States. It also confirms the opinion expressed, that the Dutch Company retained less than usual for the spring sales. The deliveries of the September sales had been so large that only about

200,000 bags remained to supply the demand till the March sales. The average deliveries of the year to 1st October, had been 77,342 bags per month.

The Trading Company held only 109,540 bags towards the spring sales, and the shipments advised from Java to 25th August were so limited, the Company were not expected to have over 200,000 bags prior to February, when the spring sales are announced. This would not be half the average quantity for the past twelve years.

ARTICLE III.

Division of Human Food.

Man, when confined to animal food, requires for his support and nourishment extensive sources of food, even more widely extended than the lion and tiger, because, when he has the opportunity, he kills without eating.

A nation of hunters, on a limited space, is utterly incapable of increasing its numbers beyond a certain point, which is soon attained. The carbon necessary for respiration must be obtained from the animals, of which only a limited number can live on the space supposed. These animals collect from plants the constituents of their organs and of their blood, and yield them, in turn, to the savages who live by the chase alone. They, again, receive this food unaccompanied by those compounds, destitute of nitrogen, which, during the life of the animals, served to support the respiratory process. In such men, confined to an animal diet, it is the carbon of the flesh and of the blood which must take the place of starch and sugar.

But 15 lbs. of flesh contain no more carbon than 4 lbs. of starch, and while the savage with one animal and an equal weight of starch could maintain life and health for a certain number of days, he would be compelled, if confined to flesh alone, in order to procure the carbon necessary for respiration, during the same time, to consume five such animals.

It is easy to see, from these considerations, how close the connection is between agriculture and the multiplication of the human species. The cultivation of our crops has ulimately no other object than the production of a maximum of those substances which are adapted for assimilation and respiration, in the smallest possible space. Grain and other nutritious vegetables yield us, not only in starch, sugar, and gum, the carbon which protects our organs from the action of oxygen, and produces in the organism

the heat which is essential to life, but also in the form of vegetable fibrine, albumen, and caseine, our blood, from which the other parts of our body are developed.

Man, when confined to animal food, respires, like the carnivora, at the expense of the matters produced by the metamorphosis of organized tissues; and, just as the lion, tiger, hyæna, in the cages of a menagerie, are compelled to accelerate the waste of the organized tissues by incessant motion, in order to furnish the matter necessary for respiration, so the savage, for the very same object, is forced to make the most laborious exertions, and go through a vast amount of muscular exercise. He is compelled to consume force merely in order to supply matter for respiration.

Cultivation is the economy of force. Science teaches us the simplest means of obtaining the greatest effect with the smallest expenditure of power, and with given means to produce a maximum of force. The unprofitable exertion of power, the waste of force in agriculture, in other branches of industry, in science, or in social economy, is characteristic of the savage state, or of the want of knowledge.

In accordance with what I have already stated, you will perceive that the substances of which the food of man is composed may be divided into two classes; into nitrogenized and non-nitrogenized. The former are capable of conversion into blood; the latter are incapable of this transformation.

Out of those substances which are adapted to the formation of blood are formed all the organized tissues. The other class of substances, in the normal state of health, serve to support the process of respiration. The former may be called the plastic elements of nutrition; the latter, elements of respiration.

Among the formor we reckon

Vegetable fibrine.

Vegetable Albumen.

Vegetable caseine.

Animal flesh.

Animal blood.

Among the elements of respiration in our food are

Fat.

Grape Sugar.

Starch.

Sugar of milk.

[blocks in formation]

Wine.

Beer.

Spirits.

The most recent and exact researches have established as an universal fact, to which nothing yet known is opposed, that the nitrogenized constituents of vegetable food have a composition identical with that of the constituents of the blood.

No nitrogenized compound, the composition of which differs from that of fibrine, albumen, and caseine, is capable of supporting the vital process in animals.

The animal organism unquestionably possesses the power of forming, from the constituents of its blood, the substance of its

membranes and cellular tissue, of the nerves and brain, and of the organic part of cartilages and bones. But the blood must be supplied to it ready formed in everything but its form—that is, in its chemical composition. If this be not done, a period is rapidly put to the formation of blood, and consequently to life.

This consideration enables us easily to explain how it happens that the tissues yielding gelatine or chondrine, as, for example, the gelatine of skin or of bones, are not adapted for the support of the vital process; for their composition is different from that of fibrine or albumen. It is obvious that this means nothing more than that those parts of the animal organism which form the blood do not possess the power of affecting a transformation in the arrangement of the elements of gelatine, or of those tissues which contain it. The gelatinous tissues, the gelatine of the bones, the mem*branes, the cells, and the skin, suffer in the animal body, under the influence of oxygen and moisture, a progressive alteration; a part of these tissues is separated, and must be restored from the blood; but this alteration and restoration is obviously confined within narrow limits.

While, in the body of a starving or sick individual, the fat disappears, and the muscular tissue takes once more the form of blood, we find that the tendons and membranes retain their natural condition; the limbs of the dead body retain their connections, which depend on the gelatinous tissues.

On the other hand, we see that the gelatine of bones devoured by a dog entirely disappears, while only the bone earth is found in his excrements. The same is true of man, when fed on food rich in gelatine, as, for example, strong soup. The gelatine is not to be found either in the urine or in the fæces, and consequently must have undergone a change, and must have served some purpose in the animal economy. It is clear that the gelatine must be expelled from the body in a form different from that in which it was introduced as food.

When we consider the transformation of the albumen of the blood into a part of an organ composed of fibrine, the identity in composition of the two substances renders the change easily conceivable. Indeed we find the change of a dissolved substance into an insoluble organ of vitality, chemically speaking, natural and easily explained, on account of this very identity of composition. Hence the opinion is not unworthy of a closer investigation, that gelatine, when taken in the dissolved state, is again converted, in the body, into cellular tissue, membrane, and cartilage; that it may serve for the reproduction of such parts of these tissues as have been wasted, and for their growth.

And when the powers of nutrition in the whole body are affected by a change of the health, then, even should the power of forming blood remain the same, the organic force by which the constituents,

of the blood are transformed into cellular tissue and membranes must necessarily be enfeebled by sickness. In the sick man, the intensity of the vital force, its power to produce metamorphoses, must be diminished as well in the stomach as in all other parts of the body. In this condition, the uniform experience of practical physicians shows that gelatinous matters in a dissolved state exercise a most decided influence on the state of the health. Given in a form adapted for assimilation, they serve to husband the vital force, just as may be done in the case of the stomach, by due preparation of the food in general.

Brittleness in the bones of graminivorous animals is clearly owing to a weakness in those parts of the organism whose function it is to convert the constituents of the blood into cellular tissue and membrane; and if we can trust to the reports of physicians who have resided in the East, the Turkish women, in their diet of rice, and in the frequent use of enemata of strong soup, have united the conditions necessary for the formation both of cellular tissue and of fat.

CIRCULATION OF MATTER IN THE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE KINGDOMS. THE OCEAN. AGRICULTURE.-RESTITUTION OF AN EQUILIBRIUM IN THE SOIL.-Causes of the exhaustion of Land. -Virginia.-England.-Relief gained by importation of bones. -Empirical Farming unsatisfactory.-Necessity for scientific principles. Influence of the Atmosphere.-Of Saline and Earthy matters of the soil.

In the immense, yet limited expanse of the ocean, the animal and vegetable kingdoms are mutually dependent upon, and successive to, each other. The animals obtain their constituent elements from the plants, and restore them to the water in their original form, when they again serve as nourishment to a new generation of plants.

The oxygen which marine animals withdraw in their respiration from the air, dissolved in sea-water, is returned to the water by the vital processes of sea-plants; that air is richer in oxygen than atmospheric air, containing 32 to 33 per cent., while the latter contains only 21 per cent. Oxygen also combines with the products of the putrefaction of dead animal bodies, changes their carbon into carbonic acid, their hydrogen into water, and their nitrogen assumes again the form of ammonia.

Thus we observe in the ocean a circulation takes place without the addition or subtraction of any element, unlimited in duration,

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