really one of a circle of organs appropriated to a function such as is here supposed, a purpose is assigned to it adequate to its rank in the scale of organization; inferior to few, if its importance be estimated by the quantity of arterial blood with which it is supplied; yet this is the organ for which Paley could find no better use than that of serving for package. 702. But in whatever mode the lymph be elaborated, it is certain that it consists of matter highly animalized, and that its most important principles, its albumen, its fibrin, its globules, and even its salts, are in a chemical condition closely resembling that in which they exist in the blood. 703. It will appear hereafter that all the proximate principles of which the body is composed are reducible by analysis to three, namely, sugar, oil, and albumen: of these, sugar and oil are the least, and albumen the most highly organized. Every alimentary substance must contain at least one of these proximate principles, and in the various articles which compose an ordinary meal always two, and often all three, are afforded in abundance. From the phenomena which have been stated, it is clear that the digestive organs, in acting on these principles, exert the following powers. 1. A solvent power. The first action of the stomach on the alimentary substances presented to it is to reduce them to a fluid state. No substance is nutritious which is not a fluid, or capable of being reduced to a fluid. The stomach reduces alimentary substances to a fluid state by combining them with water. Water enters into the composition of organized bodies in two states, as an essential and as an accidental element. A quantity of water is contained in sugar when reduced to its dryest state; this water cannot be dissipated without the decomposition of the sugar; it is therefore an essential constituent of the compound. Water is combined with sugar in its moist state: of this water much may be removed without destroying the essential properties of the sugar: this part of the water is therefore said to be an accidental constituent of the sugar. In most cases organized bodies contain water in both these forms; and though it is commonly impossible to discriminate between the water that is essential and that which is accidental, yet the mode of union among the elements of bodies in these two states of their combination with water are essentially different. The stomach has the power of combining water with alimentary substances in both these forms. Thus fluid albumen, or white of egg, presented to the stomach is immediately coagulated or converted into a solid. Soon this solid begins to be softened, and the softening goes on until it is again reduced to a fluid. What was fluid albumen in the white of egg is now fluid albumen in chyme; but the albumen has undergone a remarkable change. Out of the stomach the albumen of the egg may be converted by heat into a firm solid; but the