mouth is placed. The hen lays eggs, each of which is inclosed in a
hard shell. If you break an egg the contents flow out and are seen to
consist of the colorless glairy "white" and the yellow "yolk." If the
white is collected by itself in water and then heated it becomes
turbid, forming a white solid, very similar to the vegetable albumin,
which is called animal albumin.

If the yolk is beaten up with water, no starch nor cellulose is
obtained from it, but there will be plenty of fatty and some
saccharine matter, besides substances more or less similar to albumin
and gluten.

The feathers of the fowl are chiefly composed of horn; if they are
stripped off and the body is boiled for a long time, the water will be
found to contain a quantity of gelatin, which sets into a jelly as it
cools; and the body will fall to pieces, the bones and the flesh
separating from one another. The bones consist almost entirely of a
substance which yields gelatin when it is boiled in water, impregnated
with a large quantity of salts of lime, just as the wood of the wheat
stem is impregnated with silica. The flesh, on the other hand, will
contain albumin, and some other substances which are very similar to
albumin, termed fibrin and syntonin.

In the living bird, all these bodies are united with a great quantity
of water, or dissolved, or suspended in water; and it must be
remembered that there are sundry other constituents of the fowl's body
and of the egg, which are left unmentioned, as of no present
importance.

The wheat plant contains neither horn, nor gelatin, and the fowl