26 Professor Macaire on the 



drying process, the greater part lost their vegetative power, but 

 some preserved it, and among the latter we again find wheat, 

 rye, barley, and cabbage. 



These results, important for agriculture, prove that a seed, 

 after sprouting and being exposed to the heat of the sun, may 

 recover its vegetative power by being sufficiently moistened, 

 although dead to appearance ; and these alternate dryings, the 

 death and life of vegetation, may be frequently repeated, until 

 the plant, by penetrating more deeply into the earth, can draw 

 from it strength to resist the drying action of the sun. The 

 circumstances which produce these phenomena are of such a 

 nature as frequently to occur in the labours of the husbandman ; 

 and it is interesting to know that the most useful grains are 

 likewise those which best resist these destructive influences. 



We may add to these investigations, those which relate to the 

 absorption of oxygen by the fatty and essential oils, an ab- 

 sorption which Theodore de Saussure ascertained to amount, in 

 the case of many of them, to a considerable number of times 

 the extent of their own volume ; those which relate to vegetable 

 chemistry, properly so called, as for example the analysis of alco- 

 hol and ether, by decomposing them in a red hot tube, that of 

 olefiant gas, of the naphtha of Amiano, and of the petroleum of 

 Travers ; the invention of a new process for the elementary 

 analysis of various vegetable products, by means of combustion 

 in a large globe full of oxygen, an exact process, but of such 

 difficult execution that it required all the skill of such an ex- 

 perimenter to succeed; the decomposition of starch to the 

 state of paste, at the ordinary temperature, by the action 

 of air and water ; the conversion of starch into a saccharine 

 matter, and researches on fermentation ; all investigations of 

 great scientific importance, but of which I can give only the 

 titles, as the analysis would occupy too much space. We must 

 add to these many mineral analyses, such as those of hydro - 

 phane, sapphire, jade, and dolomite ; an essay on alumina, a 

 memoir on the decomposition of phosphates by carbon, and 

 many others besides. 



A subject of a diiferent kind, which Theodore de Saussure 

 had investigated very deeply, according to his wont, in a series 

 of memoirs inserted in the same collection where I now write 



