Not to mention the impulse which its progress has given to a host of other
sciences, what strange and unexpected results has it not brought to light
in its application to some of the most common objects! Who, for instance,
would have conceived that linen rags were capable of producing _more than
their own weight of sugar_, by the simple agency of one of the cheapest
and most abundant acids?--that dry bones could be a magazine of nutriment,
capable of preservation for years, and ready to yield up their sustenance
in the form best adapted to the support of life, on the application of
that powerful agent, steam, which enters so largely into all our processes,
or of an acid at once cheap and durable?--that sawdust itself is
susceptible of conversion into a substance bearing no remote analogy to
bread; and though certainly less palatable than that of flour, yet noway
disagreeable, and both wholesome and digestible as well as highly
nutritive?
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