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inhaling oxygen they lose their vital power, are soon suffocated, and
the plant dies. The expiration of oxygen by the leaves is connected
with the nourishment of a plant, the inspiration of that gas is
connected with its life.
When the sap is completely organized by respiration, evaporation,
and the chemico-vital agency of light, it descends chiefly through the
cambium, lying between the liber and the wood. From this layer the
sap distributes to each organ capable of increase, the requisite
nutritious liquids, deposits various organic compounds, and annually
renews the cambium. Part of the sap in its descent runs into the
wood through the horizontal medullary rays, in the cells of which it
deposits starch. The descent of the sap is no doubt due to
gravitation.
The latex is a general name for those white or coloured juices
peculiar to some plants. It is separated in the leaves from the
descending sap, which is always colourless, and consists of a clear
liquid, thickened and coloured by white, yellow, reddish-brown, or
green globules floating in it; it does not turn blue under the action of
iodine, therefore it does not contain starch. These proper juices
differ as much in quality as in colour; some contain fatty matters,
others substances of a totally different nature, as caoutchouc; a few
are bland and nutritious, many acrid and poisonous; some contain
alkaloids, others have none. These juices are by no means essential
to the life of the plant, for sometimes they are wanting in their most
essential parts, and they are found in certain species and not in
others most nearly allied. Certain it is, that tropical lactescent plants
which do not produce their proper juices when brought to a cold
climate, still produce their milk vessels.
These vessels follow the ramifications of the veins of the leaves in
the highest class, and also in some of the monocotyledons. In the
stem the milk vessels belong especially to the layers of the bark,
where they take the form of long reticulated perpendicular ducts,
through which the proper juices descend towards the roots.
Each plant has its own system of milk vessels, and M. Lestiboudois
has found that the coloured liquids have a rapid motion; the
movements are very complicated, not from point to point, but in
such a manner that the granules are carried by the liquid into all the
ramifications of a complicated network.
The septa, or divisions between the primordial cells, exert a
powerful influence upon the substances contained in the sap as it
permeates through them, no doubt acting as a dialysing membrane,
which separates the gelatinous from the crystalloid matter. The latex
is probably separated from the sap by the septa in the cells of the
leaves, and sent into the vessels peculiar to it, and then, while the
sap is descending and passing through the cambium, it is likely to be
dialysed by the septa between the cells of that layer, arresting the
protein, and other gelatinous substances, and allowing sugar, starch,
and other crystalloid matter to pass freely, and form deposits of
organic compounds for the following year. For perennial plants in
extra-tropical countries remain in a dormant state during the winter;
their cells are then full of organic compounds under the form of
protein, as well as sugar, gum, &c., but especially starch, which is
converted into sugar or dextrine, when spring awakens the plants to
renewed life and activity.
The composition of inorganic matter is very simple; there are
comparatively few radicals, and the substances are compounded of
few equivalent atoms, at most eight or ten, sometimes only two or
three. Carbonic oxide is formed of one atom of carbon and one of
oxygen; carbonic acid is formed of one atom of carbon and two of
oxygen; and acetylene, M. Bertholet’s base of synthetic compounds,
contains two atoms of carbon and two of hydrogen, chemically
united; but no organic compound contains less than three equivalent
atoms, generally a great many more. For example, citric acid, which
is lemon juice, contains 12 atoms of carbon, 5 of hydrogen, and 11
of oxygen; while strychnine contains 44 atoms of carbon, 23 of
hydrogen, 4 of oxygen, and 2 of nitrogen. Experiment has proved
that the powers which maintain stability among the numerous and
complex constituents of organic substances decrease in energy as
the number of the equivalent atoms augments; hence such
compounds are in less stable equilibrium than those of inorganic
bodies, and are more liable to be disturbed and changed into new
and more stable forms.
As the chemical functions are not the same in all the cells, situated
as they are in different parts of a plant, they elaborate different
substances from the same materials. Besides, new substances are
introduced with the growth of the plant, to be acted upon by the
light and heat of the different seasons, so that numerous
compounds may be formed out of a given number of the primary
elements. For example, the ultimate elements of wheaten flour, or a
grain of ripe wheat, are carbon, the three elementary gases, sulphur,
phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, and silex; but during the
germination and growth of the plant, its flowering, forming the seed,
and ripening the grain, certain portions of these elements chemically
combine in definite proportions to form cellulose, starch, sugar, gum,
gluten, fibrin, albumen, casein, and fat, all of which are found in
wheaten flour.
However much plants may differ in their organic products, they all
agree in producing protein, which takes an active part in the
formation of cells; and all produce neutral hydrates of carbon, such
as cellulose, starch, sugar, gum, &c., which consist of carbon,
combined with hydrogen and oxygen in the exact proportion that
forms water. Many of them have precisely the same quantity of
carbon, and only differ in the quantity of the aquatic element, as for
example, lignin, starch, and cane-sugar, which consist of 12 parts of
carbon, in a state of combination with 8, 10, and 11 parts of water
respectively; indeed the affinity between many of these neutral
hydrates is of a most intimate character. Some of their varieties are
isomeric, that is to say, they contain the same ingredients in the
same proportions, and yet they differ essentially in regard to their
properties.
Next to cellulose, starch is the most universal and distinctive of
vegetable productions, being a constituent of all plants, except the
fungi. It abounds in the grains and other seeds, and supplies the
young plant with food till it can feed itself. In both of the flowering
classes it occurs in small colourless transparent grains, either floating
in the sap, attached to the walls of the cells, or accumulated within
them. Starch globules of very small size are imbedded, either singly
or in groups, in the granules of chlorophyll, or leaf green; the
manner in which the green coating takes place is unknown. Starch is
an organic substance, varying from grains of inappreciable
minuteness to such as are visible to the naked eye, and of such a
variety of forms that it can be ascertained with tolerable certainty by
what plant a grain of starch has been produced. The small grains are
generally globular, but whatever the form may be, each consists of a
series of superimposed layers of different densities, which exhibit
coloured rings and a black cross in polarized light.
Starch is an early and transient product of young plants, which is
destined to be changed into nutritious substances at a later period,
but being insoluble in cold water it is unfit to travel with the sap.
However a ferment called diastase produced during the incipient
germination of the grains and seeds, in the tubers of potatoes, &c.,
being in a state of change, imparts that state to the starch, and
converts it into a sweet soluble matter known as dextrine or starch-
gum which is capable of being carried throughout the plant with the
sap, and which is itself ultimately changed into sugar. Dextrine is an
ingredient in the primordial cell. Starch, dextrine, and cellulose are
isomeric: consisting of the same elements with different characters.
The woody part of trees and shrubs, the fibres of hemp, flax, of
the Agave, and many other plants, are formed of cellulose, the
purest form of that substance being bleached flax and linen. During
the progress of vegetation, the cells of the ligneous tissue of trees,
also those of woody and fibrous plants, which are transparent and
colourless when young, become internally coated or filled with
sclerogen, the colouring matter of wood, a substance of various
hues. In extra-tropical countries it is generally some shade of brown,
sometimes dark, sometimes so pale as to be almost white with a
yellowish or reddish tinge; and occasionally it is beautifully marked
as in the wood of the olive. In tropical countries the colours are
more vivid and varied, deeper and even black, as in ebony. This
colouring matter has the same quantity of oxygen as cellulose, but it
contains hydrogen and more carbon, hence wood is combustible in
proportion to the quantity of sclerogen it contains. In beech it forms
half of the wood, in oak two thirds, and in ebony nine tenths, so it is
the most highly combustible of the three. The additional carbon is
obtained by increased respiration, the hydrogen by decomposition of
water in the sap.
Sugar is almost as universal a constituent of the higher classes of
plants as cellulose and starch, for besides the saccharine juice of
innumerable plants, starch, the acids of unripe plants, and even the
acrid juice of the fig and other plants, is turned into sugar as the
plant advances to maturity, and the fruits ripen. Manna and other
saccharine exudations from the leaves or stems of trees, as the lime
tree, are probably intercepted by the dialysing septa of the cells, and
exude to the exterior through the pores of the skin. The sweet juice
found in the nectaries of flowers is formed in other parts of the
plant, and rarely flows to the flower before it is full blown; the
quantity is at its maximum during the emission of the pollen, and
ceases when the fruit is formed. In diœcious plants and that singular
and beautiful race the Orchideæ, it is evidently intended to attract
insects for their aid in fertilization.
Vegetable oils, resins, and wax, consisting of the same simple
elements as the hydrates, form a large class of inflammable organic
substances in which hydrogen predominates. Olive oil is a rare
instance of a fixed oil being obtained from a fruit; some laurels have
that property also, but the fixed oils are chiefly found in seeds, as
the walnut, hazel nut, and the almond, in which the principle of oil is
in its greatest purity. It is particularly abundant in hemp seed, and in
a great variety of plants the starch in the seed is changed into oil to
nourish the embryo, till the seed lobes are above the ground, and
the true lobes appear.
Resins, gums, and wax, being colloid substances, are dialysed and
ejected from the system either through the fissures in the bark, or
by pores in the leaves. The resins exude through the bark from
canals that run between the cells of the plant, in solution, and are
consolidated by the oxygen on coming into the air. The herbaceous
zone in the bark of the fir and pine family furnish an abundant
supply of resins and balsams; the camphor tribe and the Amyrids are
rich in them, as frankincense, myrrh, balm of Mecca, and the
Olibanum, supposed to be the frankincense of scripture.
Wax is a frequent vegetable production, especially in the torrid
zone, where many of the wax-bearing plants supply the natives with
light. An exudation through the pores of many plants coats their
surfaces with resin or wax. Young buds are often covered with resin
to protect them from cold and wet during the winter and early
spring, as those of the horse-chestnut and balsam poplar. It is wax
that gives the bloom to the plum, cherry, and grape, and the rain
drops lie on the waxy surface of the cabbage leaf, like balls of
diamond, from the total reflection of light at their point of contact.
Wax protects plants from damp in a rainy climate, and prevents too
strong perspiration from the fleshy leaves of the aloe, cactus, and
other inhabitants of the parched and hot regions in the tropics.
The vegetable substances hitherto under consideration are
neutral, but the remarkable compounds albumen, fibrin, and casein,
already mentioned as constituents of wheaten flour, not only contain
carbon and hydrogen with a little oxygen, but azote and small
quantities of sulphur and phosphorus. Each of these three organic
compounds is the same, whether derived from animal or vegetable
matter. Thus albumen is chemically the same, whether obtained
from wheat and other grains, from arrowroot, dahlia roots, the
serum of blood, or the white of an egg. As it constitutes the film or
thin coating of the primordial cell, and combines with dextrine in its
internal viscid lining, it not only forms an ingredient in all vegetable
organisms, but plays an important part in the growth of the whole
vegetable world. Fibrin is chemically the same in the juice of plants
and in blood, in which it exists as a liquid during the life of the
animal, and as a fibre after death. It forms the basis of the muscular
system in animals, and that extracted from the juice of plants
coagulates spontaneously like blood. Casein is chemically identical,
whether derived from the curd of milk, or from peas and beans.
Azote is a very important principle in these substances as well as in
the gelatinous substance gluten. It forms an essential part of the
animal structure, and is either highly nutritious or deleterious in the
vegetable, being at once one of the most valuable, contradictory and
powerful agents in nature.
Chemists have formed by synthesis compounds identical with all
the fixed and essential oils, for confectioners can now give the
flavour of the pear, orange, quince, pine apple and other fruits by
means of artificial chemical compounds. All the saccharine
substances have not yet been artificially obtained, nor the
albuminous substances, albumen, fibrin, and casein.
It cannot be a matter of surprise, when chemists form organic
substances out of inorganic elements, that they should succeed in
transforming compounds produced by living plants into new
compounds, as that of changing the vegetable acids into alcohols,
which is now done. But some of the acids themselves are
synthetically formed out of inorganic elements; as for example the
oxalic, the most common of all the vegetable acids, which is found
most abundantly in the Oxalis or wood sorrel, and is a frequent
constituent of the highest and lowest plants. The formic acid, which
is the acrid stinging principle in ants, is also synthetically formed; it
is found in the juice of the stinging nettle and in decaying pine
leaves, and contains hydrogen like all the other vegetable acids.
These acids result from an augmentation of oxygen during nocturnal
respiration, which penetrates deeply into the vegetable structure.
Octahedral, prismatic, and stellar microscopic crystals formed by
the chemical combination of the natural acids with bases imbibed by
the roots, are deposited in the cells under the skin, and in all parts
of plants. However, they appear most frequently as bundles of
needle-shaped crystals of carbonate of lime, lying side by side in the
hollow of a cell. They are known as raphides, from raphis a needle,
and may be easily seen under the skin of the medicinal squill. Large
single crystals of oxalate of lime, octahedral or prismatic, are found
in the cells under the skin of the onion and other plants; and stellar
crystals of the same substance abound so much in the common
rhubarb that the best specimens of the dry medicinal root contain as
much as thirty-five per cent. of them; while certain aged plants of
the cactus tribe have their tissues so loaded with them as to become
quite brittle. The calcareous base in some instances is combined
with tartaric, citric, or malic acid. The crystals of some raphides are
1
⁄40th of an inch long, others are not more than the hundredth; they
are brought into view by polarized light.[80] Spherical raphides
between the 1⁄2000th and 1⁄4000th of an inch in diameter have been
discovered scattered profusely through the tissues of the leaves, and
those parts of plants which are modifications of the leaves; they may
be seen under the skin of Pelargoniums and other plants, and it is
supposed that few if any orders of plants are without them.[81]
Although azote forms 788 thousandth parts of the atmosphere,
none, or at least no appreciable quantity of it, is absorbed by the
vegetable world; that great principle of nourishment is entirely
supplied by ammonia and nitric acid, imbibed by the roots, and
decomposed by the chemico-vital power. Here it shows its capricious
character by combining with other simple elements in the bark, to
produce the most precious medicines in some plants, and in others
the most deadly poisons, while no vegetable substance is perfectly
nutritious without it.
The milk sap, when exposed to the air, coagulates into a tenacious
viscid solid. The white juice is generally acrid, or narcotic, or both,
and for the most part extremely poisonous, though exhibiting strong
contrasts even in nearly allied species. In the order Euphorbiaceæ or
Spurgeworts, comprising nearly 1,500 species, a large proportion are
hurtful; but there is a gradation from mere stimulants to the most
formidable poisons. This order furnishes the Ethiope and the native
Brazilian with poison for their arrows. It contains the Manchineel,
and Excœcaria Agallocha, the most poisonous of plants; even the
smoke from the burning branches of the Excœcaria affects the eyes
with insufferable pain. The white juice of the Fig, one of the Morad
order, is violently poisonous; in many, as in the common fig, it is
acrid and irritating. The Antiaris toxicaria, the celebrated Upas-tree
of Java, which is of the Artocarpeæ or Bread-fruit order, owes its
virulence to its milky juice, which contains strychnia, the most fatal
of drugs. Dangerous and acrid as these orders are, the Bread-fruit,
abounding in starch, supplies the inhabitants of the East Indian
islands with excellent food; the milky juice of the Cow-trees, chiefly
of the Bread-fruit and Fig orders, furnishes a wholesome beverage to
the South Americans; and the Manihot or Cassava, a poisonous
spurgewort when raw, yields when roasted nutritious food to whole
nations, the heat driving off the dangerous principle. Caoutchouc, a
most harmless substance, is the solid produce of many of the most
acrid and virulent juices of plants belonging to the preceding orders;
the poison is probably left in the liquid. The chemico-vital power is
strikingly illustrated by the number of safe and excellent fruits
produced by trees full of the most deleterious juices, whether milky
or not. Some of the finest fruits in the Indian Archipelago are
products of eminently dangerous species of the Sapindaceæ or
Soapworts. The acrid juices of the leaves and branches, are so much
diluted with water in the fruits, that they become innocuous, or they
may be changed into sugar, as in the common fig. Nothing can
surpass the virulence of the juice of the Upas-tree, yet its nuts are
eaten with impunity, and the pulpy contents of the fruit of the
Strychnos nux vomica is food for birds. The leaves and berries of the
potato are so strongly narcotic, that an extract from them is
intermediate in power between that from deadly nightshade and
hemlock, yet the potato itself, like the cassava, is rendered
wholesome by being boiled or roasted.
The alkaloids are alkaline substances formed in the bark and milky
juices of plants, always combined with an acid during the life of the
plant. The chemical structure of this class of substances is very
much alike, and chemists have succeeded in forming many of them
synthetically; they all contain azote, and have a great affinity for
acids. The bark of the different species of Cinchoneæ, especially the
Cinchona cordifolia and C. Condaminea, yield three alkaloids—
namely, cinchonine, quinine, and cusconine—they are all formed of
carbon, hydrogen, and azote in the same proportions; but the first
has one atom of oxygen in addition, the second has two atoms in
addition, and the third has three; so that in these alkaloids the
carbon, hydrogen, and azote combine to form an organic radical,
which is oxidized in three different degrees. Six of the alkaloids have
been obtained from opium, which is the solid portion of the milk
juice of the poppy; of these, morphine seems to be the narcotic
principle; and the orange-coloured milk sap of the Chelidonium, a
very poisonous and acrid plant of the poppy order, has furnished
chelidonine. The Colchicum order, containing the meadow saffron or
autumnal crocus, and Veratrum album or white hellebore, as well as
many other plants, yield alkaloids, all of which are medicinal or
poisonous, according to the dose.
There is scarcely a people, however savage, that has not
discovered some exciting narcotic. Opium is almost universally
smoked or eaten among Eastern nations; and bhang, a strong
narcotic, obtained from the leaves of Indian hemp, is in equally
universal use among the Brazilian savages and Hottentots, but
especially among the Malays, who are excited to madness when they
smoke it too freely. The same intoxicating effect is produced by a
strong liquor prepared from the Datura sanguinea, a species of
stramonium; and its congener tobacco, now all but a necessary of
life among civilized mankind, was smoked by the natives of the
American continent, before the arrival of the Europeans, as a relief
from hunger.
Coffee has been long in use on account of its stimulating principle
caffeine, which is now discovered to be the same with theine, the
latter, however, being less exciting, unless the tea plant grows in a
very hot climate. In countries where nature furnishes few narcotic
principles, wine, beer, and spirits supply their place, especially in the
far north, where animal heat is rapidly carried off by the cold, and
carbon must be furnished to satisfy the all-devouring oxygen which
we draw in at every breath.
Caffeine, the highly azotized principle of coffee, obtained from tea
leaves and coffee beans, is one of the substances known as neutral
crystallisable principles. Similar substances are found in asparagus,
pepper, almonds, the bark on the roots of the apple, pear, plum, and
cherry trees, as well as in the bark of the willow. The two last are
especially analogous, and contain no azote, as the others do.
The colouring matter of flowers is a fluid contained in cells,
situated immediately under the skin, which itself is perfectly
transparent and colourless. The whiteness of the white Camellia,
rose, lily, and other flowers, is supposed to be owing to the total
reflection of light from the cells immediately below the skin, which
are either full of air, or of a colourless liquid. The predominating
colours are yellow, red, and blue, with the various intermediate tints.
Sometimes these colours are converted one into another in the petal
after fertilization, at which period the colours are brightest. The
chemical nature of these liquids, the cause of their variety, and their
definite arrangement in one and the same petal, do not seem as yet
to be ascertained.
The parts of plants that are not green inhale oxygen from the
atmosphere, and exhale carbonic acid gas exactly like animals.
During the chemical combinations of the oxygen with the carbon
derived from the nutriment to form the carbonic acid gas, heat is
necessarily evolved, especially in the flower, the point of maximum
heat varying with its expansion. The blossoms of the Aroideæ, or
Arums, are remarkable for the evolution of heat. According to
Saussure, a blossom of the common Arum maculatum consumes five
times its volume of oxygen in twenty-four hours previous to its
evolution of fruit, so it is not wonderful that the chemical
combination of such a quantity of oxygen should produce a strong
development of specific temperature. By M. Dutrochet’s
observations, the heat evolved by the Arum maculatum has a
maximum in the day and a minimum in the night, and he found that
it exceeded the heat of the surrounding air by between 25° and 27°.
The heat of the Colocasia odorata, another Arad, was determined by
several observers to be even 50° above the warmth of the air. The
heat evolved by germinating seeds when in a heap is not from
fermentation; it is owing to their consumption of oxygen and
expiration of carbonic acid gas. The temperature of all vegetating
parts of plants, the roots, leaves, young juicy shoots, &c., is far
superior to that of their flowers. It arises from the nutritive process,
and has a maximum at noon, and a minimum at midnight, like that
of the flower. The growth of plants is most vigorous at noon;
consequently there is then a greater evolution of heat.
Water in small quantities is secreted night and morning from the
points of the leaves of many plants, probably to relieve them from a
superabundance of liquid, which evaporation is insufficient to carry
off. The arums are remarkable for the quantity they eject. It falls in
drops from the points of the leaves. About half a pint is given out
every night by the enormous leaves of the Caladium distillatorium, a
species of Arad. In that plant, and in the Colocasia, the water flows
in canals along each rib into a general duct, which runs along the
border of the leaf, and terminates in an orifice upon the surface.
Since electricity is developed by chemical action in unorganized
matter, it may be inferred that it is also developed within the
vegetable cell where so many organic compounds are formed; but it
is probably given off from the points of the leaves or by evaporation
from their surfaces. Professor Fleming ascertained by actual
experiment, that the sap of a leaf, and its surface, are in different
electric states; he also found that the surface of the spongioles of
the roots of plants and the ascending sap have opposite electricities.
Both of the preceding cases the Professor ascribes, in part at least,
to organic changes which take place during vegetation. Slight
currents of electricity were obtained from the petioles of flowers, but
fruits and tubers give powerful electrical currents due to the reaction
of different vegetable juices upon one another. The tuberose is said
to emit scintillations and dart small sparks of light in a hot electric
evening, and gardeners have long been aware that mushroom
spawn is most prolific in stormy weather.
The irritability of the tissues of plants which renders them liable to
be acted upon by external causes, has occupied the attention of
many celebrated botanists. From experiments by Professor
Ferdinand Cohn and his pupil M. Krabsch upon the irritability of the
stamens in the florets on the discs of composite flowers, more
especially the Centaureas, they have come to the conclusion that
susceptibility to the excitement of light, as well as to that of
mechanical and probably electrical impulse, is possessed by all
young vigorous tissues, and upon comparing the phenomena of
these with those of animal irritability, they further conclude that the
faculty of responding to external irritation by internal movements
and change of form, belongs to cells, and holds good in the
vegetable as in the animal kingdom. To be irritable, to change its
normal form as a vessel of excitation, and to revert to the normal
form after a while by its internal elasticity, are characteristics of the
living cell. In plants these properties are met with only when the
vital processes are in full activity, and therefore are particularly
noticed during the period of flowering, when the processes are at
the maximum. And it may be remarked that the stamens, in which
irritability is most frequently noticed, are the only organs in which an
elevation of temperature measurable by the thermometer occurs,
although a certain degree of heat is generated in all plant cells by
the chemical process going on within them. It is to be supposed that
irritable properties belong to all parts of plants, but that they exist in
an intensified degree, and for a certain epoch, in those parts where
their results arrest attention, as in the stamens of the Centaurea,
berberry, cactus, Cistus, nettle, &c., and in the anthers of the
Stylideæ, the leaves of Dionæa muscipula, and many others, all of
which are more or less affected by the external action of mechanical
force and electricity; for it is scarcely possible that plants should not
be under the influence of atmospheric electricity, since every shower
of rain forms a perfect conductor between the clouds and the earth.
The motion does not always immediately follow the excitement;
plants often require to be rudely shaken before the movement
begins. M. Hofmeister has observed that all young shoots and leaves
become curved by mechanical shaking.
Light is the most universal and important exciting cause in the
vegetable world. The mouths of the stomata are opened by the
influence of light. The leaves, young shoots, and tendrils turn to the
light; it regulates the sleep of plants, as well as the diurnal motions
of the daisy and sunflower. The opening of blossoms and of folded
leaves which had been closed in sleep during the night, shows the
susceptibility of their tissues to the influence of light, an influence
beautifully exhibited by the orange-coloured Eschscholtzia, which
shuts its golden blossoms under every passing cloud.
All M. Cohn’s experiments prove that in the Mimosa pudica, which
is highly sensible to the action of light, heat, electricity, and touch,
‘the propagation of the external excitement, proceeds in the same
mode as in animals, and there is little doubt that the vascular tissue
(which contain spiral vessels) constitute the special bundles adapted
for the purpose, and that the phenomena of contractibility depend
upon a muscular tissue.’[82]
From Professor Franklin’s experiments it appears that ‘the motions
resulting from external causes are owing to vital contractibility, and
that they are governed by the same laws which regulate similar
action in the animal kingdom. Their energies vary with the vigour of
the plant; they are exhausted by over exercise, and require rest; and
like animals they are lulled and put to sleep by chloroform and
narcotics.’

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

1. Professor Faraday.

2. Professor Helmholtz.

3. The address of the president, Sir William Armstrong, C.B., to

the British Association at Newcastle-on-Tyne, 26th August, 1863.

4. J. Tyndall, Esq., on Force.

 5. The Law of Exchange was independently proved by Messrs.
Tyndall, Kirchhoff, Angström, and Balfour Stewart.

6. Tyndall on Heat.

7. Analogous to transparent media which receive their colour by

stopping or absorbing some of the colours of white light and
transmitting others.

8. ‘Connection of the Physical Sciences.’

9. ‘Connection of the Physical Sciences.’

10. They are called vacuum tubes, and are filled while open by
putting one end in communication with the vessel in which the gas is
generated, and the other end in communication with an air pump.
As soon as the atmospheric air is pumped out, the gas rushes in and
fills the tube, the communication with the vessel containing the gas
is cut off by fusing up that end of the tube, and as soon as the gas
is sufficiently rarefied the other end is fused up also. An electrical
discharge that will not pass through one inch of air, will pass through
thirty or forty inches in a vacuum tube.

11. ‘Connection of the Physical Sciences.’

12. Lectures of much interest by Dr. William Odling in the

Chemical News of 1862.

13. M. H. Kopp.

14. Lectures by Dr. Crace Calvert on improvement and progress of

calico printing and dyeing since 1851.

15. This prediction, made in his Treatise on Light published in

1826, has been completely fulfilled by the discovery of four new
metals by spectrum analysis.
 16. Phil. Mag. vol. iv. 1834, p. 114.

17. ‘On the Spectrum of the Electric Spark in Compound Gases,’ by

Mr. J. M. Seguin. Comptes Rendus.

18. The light of the electric lamp is produced by an apparatus

which successively makes and breaks an electric current, whereby
the terminal charcoal points become red-hot.

19. ‘On the Means of Increasing the Intensity of Metallic Spectra.’

By Mr. W. Crookes.

20. The Chemical News and Journal of Physical Science for July 4,
1863.

21. Dr. W. A. Miller has shown that these invisible highly

refrangible rays exist in the vapours of all metals, and has obtained
photographs of their spectra (see Phil. Trans. 1862, p. 876), which
correspond to the spectra of fluorescence.

22. In γ Cassiopeiæ, Mr. Huggins has detected a second bright line

in the red part of the spectrum. He has also found that these two
bright lines agree in position with the two brightest lines of the
spectrum of hydrogen, and may therefore be considered due to
luminous hydrogen.

23. Sir John Herschel, who is of the highest authority with regard
to the nebulæ in both hemispheres.

24. Since this observation, Mr. Huggins discovered that two small
comets give an analogous spectrum.

25. From further observations Mr. Huggins is of opinion that the

red colour of this planet is not due to its atmosphere, but is peculiar
to certain parts of its surface.

26. ‘Quarterly Journal of Science,’ April 1864.

 27. Jan. 7, 1865.

28. On the latest discoveries concerning the sun’s surface, by

Balfour Stewart, Esq., in the ‘Chemical News and Journal of Physical
Science’ of April 1865.

29. According to Payen. Like starch, it is stained blue by iodine.

30. ‘On the Functions of the Nitrogenous Matter of Plants.’ By M.

L. Garreau, ‘Annales des Sciences naturelles,’ t. xiii. 1860.

31. ‘Remarks on the Vessels of the Latex, the Vasa Propria, and
the Receptacles of the elaborated Juices of Plants.’ By M.
Lestiboudois, ‘Comptes rendus,’ 1863.

32. The author is indebted throughout many parts of this section

to the excellent work of Dr. Carpenter, and to the ‘Cryptogamic
Botany’ of the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, from which also many of the cuts
are derived.

33. Mr. Berkeley’s ‘Cryptogamic Botany.’

34. ‘Dr. Carpenter’s Microscope.’

35. These motions were discovered, and are described by Dr.

Harvey, in his ‘Manual of British Marine Algæ.’

36. ‘Cryptogamic Botany.’ By the Rev. M. J. Berkeley.

37. ‘Cryptogamic Botany.’ By the Rev. M. J. Berkeley.

38. ‘The Microscope.’ By Dr. Carpenter.

39. ‘Cryptogamic Botany.’ By the Rev. M. J. Berkeley.

40. ‘British Seaweeds.’ By Mrs. Alfred Gatty.

41. ‘Flora Italica Crypta.’

 42. Mr. Berkeley’s ‘Cryptogamic Botany.’

43. Berkeley’s ‘Cryptogamic Botany.’

44. Mrs. Gatty’s ‘British Sea Weeds.’

45. Berkeley’s ‘Cryptogamic Botany.’

46. Berkeley’s ‘Cryptogamic Botany.’

47. ‘Voyage of the Adventurer and Beagle,’ by Mr. Darwin.

48. Berkeley’s ‘Cryptogamic Botany.’

49. In the Fuci each kind of fruit is discharged on the surface of

the receptacle before fructification.

50. Hooker’s ‘Flora Antarctica.’

51. Berkeley’s ‘Cryptogamic Botany.’

52. Berkeley’s ‘Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany.’

53. ‘Des Myxomycetes,’ par M. Antoine de Bary; et Mémoires par

MM. Tulasne et Hermann Hoffman, ‘Annales des Sciences Naturalles,’
4me séries.

54. ‘Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany,’ by the Rev. M. J.

Berkeley.

55. ‘Sur des Isaria et Sphæria Entomogens,’ par MM. L. et H.

Tulasne, de l’Institut, ‘Annales des Sciences Naturelles,’ 4me série,
1857.

56. ‘On the Geographical Distribution of Fungi,’ by M. E. P. Fries, of

Upsala, Sweden.
 57. Memoir by M. Hermann Hoffmann, upon Fermentation, in the
‘Ann. des Sciences Naturelles,’ 4me série, 1860.

58. ‘The Microscope,’ by Dr. Carpenter.

59. M. Hoffmann.

60. ‘Comptes rendus,’ Nov. 12, 1860.

61. ‘Geographical Distribution of Fungi,’ by M. Fries.

62. Berkeley’s ‘Cryptogamic Botany.’

63. Berkeley’s ‘Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany.’

64. Berkeley’s ‘Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany.’

65. Dr. Carpenter’s ‘Microscope.’

66. Dr. Carpenter’s ‘Microscope’

67. ‘Anatomy and Physiology of the Vegetable Cell,’ by M. Hugo

von Mohl.

68. M. von Mohl, on the ‘Vegetable Cell.’

69. Berkeley’s ‘Cryptogamic Botany.’

70. Dr. J. D. Hooker on the ‘Distribution of Ferns,’ in Berkeley’s

‘Cryptogamic Botany.’

71. ‘Index Filicum,’ by Thomas Moore, F.L.S.

72. Moore, in ‘Treasury of Botany.’

73. Berkeley’s ‘Cryptogamic Botany.’

74. Charles Johnson, Esq.

 75. Berkeley’s ‘Cryptogamic Botany.’

76. Berkeley’s ‘Cryptogamic Botany.’

77. Inflorescence and fructification are fully explained, and applied

to a vast number of plants, in ‘Structural and Physiological Botany,’
by Arthur Henfrey, Esq.,—a work of great research and merit.

78. Messrs. Hooker, Darwin, and Brongniart.

79. Professor Matteucci.

80. Dr. Carpenter, ‘Microscope.’

81. Annals of Natural History for 1863.

82. Annals and Magazines of Natural History for 1863.

Transcriber's Note

This book uses inconsistent spelling and

hyphenation, which were retained in the ebook
version. Some corrections have been made to the
text, including correcting the errata and
normalizing punctuation. Further corrections are
noted below:
p. 29 heat indedendent matter -> heat
independent matter
p. 166 next the visual center-> next to the visual
center
p. 179 in dependently -> independently
p. 251 isr eproduced -> is reproduced
p. 343 ig 56 -> Fig 56
p. 351 the fonds are articuled -> the fonds are
articulated
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