recrements

"Leaves," he says, "are the parts, or bowels of a plant, which perform the same office to sap as the lungs of an animal do to blood; that is, they purify or cleanse it of the recrements, or fuliginous steams, received in the circulation, being the unfit parts of the food, and perhaps some decayed particles which fly off the vessels through which blood and sap do pass respectively."

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 Various

As the salt of the sea has been gradually accumulating, being washed down into it from the recrements of animal and vegetable bodies, the sea must originally have been as fresh as river water; and as it is not saturated with salt, must become annually saline.

Canto I 1803

The increase of the solid parts of the globe by the recrements of organic bodies, as limestone rocks from shells and bones, and the beds of clay, marl, coals, from decomposed woods, is now well known to those who have attended to modern geology; and

Canto I 1803

For the purposes of nutrition these digested or decomposed recrements of dead animal or vegetable matter are absorbed by the lacteals of the stomachs of animals or of the roots of vegetables, and carried into the circulation of their blood, and these compose new organic parts to replace others which are destroyed, or to increase the growth of the plant or animal.

Note I 1803

The perpetual production and increase of the strata of limestone from the shells of aquatic animals; and of all those incumbent on them from the recrements of vegetables and of terrestrial animals, are now well understood from our improved knowledge of geology; and show, that parts of the globe are gradually enlarging, and consequently that it is young; as the fluid parts are not yet all converted into solid ones.

Canto I 1803

For the solid parts of the earth consisting chiefly of animal and vegetable recrements must have originally been formed or produced from the water by animal and vegetable processes; and as the solid parts of the earth may be supposed to be thrice as heavy as water, it follows that thrice the quantity of water must have vanished compared with the quantity of earth thus produced.

The Botanic Garden A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of Vegetation Erasmus Darwin 1766

Though all these facts shew that some metallic bodies are formed from vegetable or animal recrements, as iron, and perhaps manganese and calamy, all which are found near the surface of the earth; yet as the other metals are found only in fissures of rocks, which penetrate to unknown depths, they may be wholly or in part produced by ascending steams from subterraneous fires, as mentioned in note on Canto II. l.

The Botanic Garden A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of Vegetation Erasmus Darwin 1766

To which should be added, that iron is found in general in beds either near the surface of the earth, or stratified with clay coals or argillaceous grit, which are themselves productions of the modern world, that is, from the recrements of vegetables and air-breathing animals.

The Botanic Garden A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of Vegetation Erasmus Darwin 1766

The small apparent quantity of matter that exists in the universe compared to that of spirit, and the short time in which the recrements of animal or vegetable bodies become again vivified in the forms of vegetable mucor or microscopic insects, seems to have given rise to another curious fable of antiquity.

The Botanic Garden A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of Vegetation Erasmus Darwin 1766

This formation of iron from vegetable recrements is further evinced by the fern leaves and other parts of vegetables, so frequently found in the centre of the knobs or nodules of some iron-ores.

The Botanic Garden A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of Vegetation Erasmus Darwin 1766