36 



M. Mohl ow the Power of the Living Plant 



peared to me therefore not to be altogether without interest to 

 undertake a series of weighings, by which the said facts might 

 be more accurately determined. I selected for this purpose 

 some hot-house plants with thick leaves, since I had reason to 

 hope that, on account of the relatively weaker evaporation in 

 these, the results would be more distinct than in thin-leaved 

 plants : that they might die quickly without the subtraction or 

 addition of water, I let them lie in the open air for twenty-four 

 hours, at a temperature of between -— 3° and — 9° R., in which 

 time they of course were not merely frozen through and through, 

 but also completely killed. I then weighed the plants, and let 

 them lie for fifteen days in a heated room, and compared their 

 loss of weight with that of cut living specimens of as nearly the 

 same size as possible, which had laid beside the frozen specimens. 

 I consider it superfluous to publish the whole series of weighings, 

 and confine myself to the statement of those made at intervals 

 of five days, the results of which are contained in the following 

 table. The numbers express the loss of weight in per-centage 

 of the original weight of the plants : — 



I continued the weighings no further, although none of the 

 plants mentioned had lost all their water on the fifteenth day, 

 because the results appeared to me to be sufficiently distinct*. 



* I cannot forbear to remark, that the slight loss of weight, which is 

 shown by the weighing of Stapelia hirsuta (in the frozen specimen) on the 



