Larma Nucent Sectory 06

That there is a close likeness between all these bodies is obvious from the fact that when any of them is strongly heated, or allowed to putrefy, it gives off the same sort of disagreeable smell; and careful chemical analysis has shown that they are, in fact, all composed of the elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, combined in very nearly the same proportions. Indeed, charcoal, which is impure carbon, might be obtained by strongly heating either a handful of corn, or a piece of fowl's flesh, in a vessel from which the air is excluded so as to keep the corn or the flesh from burning. And if the vessel were a still, so that the products of this destructive distillation, as it is called, could be condensed and collected, we should find water and ammonia, in some shape or other, in the receiver. Now ammonia is a compound of the elementary bodies, nitrogen and hydrogen; therefore both nitrogen and hydrogen must have been contained in the bodies from which it is derived.

Various opinions have been held as to whether we have any trace of a religious belief. Theoretically speaking, they had some sort of a religion, though doubtless very vague and indistinct; for we know of no nation as far advanced as they were destitute of it.<37> It has been pointed out, that the bones of some animals, as the horse, were very rare, and their absence explained as the result of superstitious reasons. It has also been conjectured that some of the perforated bones and teeth of animals found in various deposits were amulets worn for religious purposes; and some have gone so far as to infer, that the ornamentations on some of these so-called amulets represent the sun, and that, consequently, sun-worship prevailed among the Cave-men. While these various conjectures are, of course, possible, it is equally certain they are all "mere guess-work."

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