We reply that it is, in one sense at least, derived from the food which is eaten. If animal food is eaten, it is of course derived from the body of the animal which is consumed. That animal may possibly have derived it from another animal, but more probably it has been derived in this case direct from the vegetable world. Ultimately, therefore, it is to this world that we must look as the source of that delicately constructed substance which plays such a wonderful and important part in the animal economy. If we go one link further back in the chain of causation, we shall be carried from the vegetable world to the sun as the great and ultimate physical source of that high-class energy and delicacy of construction which characterise vegetable products. It is, in truth, owing to the actinic rays of our luminary that vegetable tissue is manufactured in the leaves of plants, the carbonic acid of the air being decomposed, and oxygen given out, while the carbon, united with other substances, and modified thereby, is retained by the plant to form part of its substance, or perchance to become the food of animals. 184. We have therefore now arrived at the conclusion that the delicacy of construction which our frames require is ultimately derived from the sun, so far at least as the visible universe is concerned. If then we would reply to the question of this chapter, whether or not there may be beings superior to man connected with this present universe, let us look abroad and endeavour to ascertain whether there be in this universe any other obvious process of delicacy besides that which characterises the bodies of animals like ourselves. Now, it has been pointed out that, in the atmospheric changes of this world, and more particularly of the sun, we have processes of great delicacy. It is believed that the positions of the planets Mercury and Venus affect the behaviour of sun-spots, and thus determine the conditions of atmospheric changes on the surface of our luminary that are absolutely overwhelming in their magnitude. We have only to reflect that a large sun-spot might swallow up fifty planets like our earth, and that some of the currents connected with it move at the rate of 100 miles per second, in order to realise the enormous scale of these solar outbreaks. Again, it is believed that the state of the solar surface with regard to spots determines the storms of our earth, so that hurricanes are most numerous in the Indian Ocean as well as on the coast of America during years of maximum sun-spots.[56]