This difference consists in the vegetable feeding upon inorganic food, and the animal on food which has received the stamp of organisation. Creatures possessing life, whether vegetable or animal, are called organisms. It is found that these organisms are made up of certain atoms united in larger multiples than in inorganic substances, which are either simple or compounded of but few atoms; thus water is composed (every atom of it) of _one_ atom oxygen, united to _two_ of hydrogen. Common salt (every atom of it) is composed of _one_ atom of the metal sodium with _one_ atom of chlorine. Chalk is compounded of _one_ atom of calcium in union with _one_ of oxygen, and this united to one atom of carbonic acid, itself composed of one atom of carbon with _two_ of oxygen. But organic compounds are often made up of four or six elements, united in multiples of their usual combining quantities. Thus, grape-sugar is made up (every atom of it) of 24 atoms of carbon, 28 of hydrogen and 28 of oxygen; these 78 atoms unite and form one compound atom, of which the sugar is wholly compounded, and thus, from such a complex nature, it happens that most organic compounds are decomposed by even a moderate degree of heat--all by a heat equal to red-hot iron. From these facts, it may be therefore stated, that all organisms are complete in themselves, have definite lives or existences, appropriate certain matters to themselves, grow thereby, and are compounded of organic atoms. THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. [Illustration] QUANTITY, DISTRIBUTION, AND OFFICES OF THE VEGETABLE. In contemplating nature there are few things which give more delight than the beauty and variety of the vegetation which clothes the surface of the earth, whether it be that we contemplate the grassy covering of the plains of the Old World, or the immense "prairies" of the New, spreading out as it were into seas of grass, and giving food and shelter to thousands of wild animals; or gaze upon the rocky height of some vast mountain range, and see the gigantic oak or pine, forming by their wide-spread shades the solemn forest which extends for miles beneath us, and which forms a shelter for the various tribes of birds, monkeys, and other animals, to whom it is a home of happiness and plenty--under every aspect the contemplation of nature's clothing fills the mind with awe and admiration. There is hardly anything more refreshing to the mind than the contemplation of trees and shrubs congregated into a wood, the floor of which is carpeted with mosses and flowers, where the gigantic and gnarled trunks of the forest trees covered with many-coloured lichens starting up all round, circumscribe the view, while the wide-spreading boughs and the leafy canopy overhead exclude the sun's rays. It is here that one views nature in her purest forms and colours, untouched by the destroying hand of artificial arrangement.