The philosophy of eating. By Albert J. Bellows, M.D.

10

THE PREADAMITE EARTH.

wherever he chooses to live,-in Africa or Greenland,he finds at hand food adapted to his wants in the climate
in which he finds himself. But when we attempt to
trace the process by which this complicated and beautiful arrangement was made for man, we are lost in
wonder and admiration. The mineral elements, which
constitute the great mass of the surface of the earth,
all came originally from solid rock, and must have
been produced by the slow process of disintegration, by
which, by the action of heat, cold, and water, particle
by particle it accumulated, age after age, till the great
mass was formed which should afterwards become the
place of deposit for water, salt, coal, &c., which man
must have, and which also furnishes the fourteen different minerals which were to make a part of the human
system.
And then ages of time more must have been required
to produce the organic elements, which were formed by
the growth and decay of plants and trees, which grew
one after another, as the appropriate elements of soil
were accumulated, and gave way in turn for more perfect vegetation, till organic elements had accumulated
in sufficient quantity to supply the surface of the whole
earth with all that should be needed for the composition
and repair of the human system.
Then other ages still were required to float these
crudely mixed elements over the face of the earth, and
so intimately mix them that some portion of every element necessary should be found in every foot of soil on
the face of the earth.