M. Dumas on the Chemical Statics of Organized Beings. 461 



its elements, so also for the formation of these azotated neutral 

 matters, it suffices to unite carbon and ammonium with the 

 elements of water ; forty-eight molecules of carbon, six of am- 

 monium, and seventeen of water, constitute, or may constitute, 

 fibrine, albumen and caseum. 



Thus in both cases, reduced bodies, carbon or ammo- 

 nium, and water, suffice for the formation of the matters 

 which we are considering, and their production enters quite 

 naturally into the circle of reactions, which vegetable nature 

 seems especially adapted to produce. 



The function of azote in plants is therefore worthy of the 

 most serious attention, since it is this which serves to form the 

 fibrin which is found as the rudiment in all the organs, since 

 it is this which serves for the production of the albumen and 

 caseum, so largely diffused in so many plants, and which 

 animals assimilate or modify according to the exigencies of 

 their own nature. 



It is in plants then that the true laboratory of organic che- 

 mistry resides; — thus carbon, hydrogen, ammonium and water, 

 are the principles which plants elaborate; ligneous matter, 

 starch, gums, and sugars on the one part, fibrin, albumen, 

 caseum and gluten on the other, are then the fundamental 

 products of the two kingdoms ; products formed in plants and 

 in plants alone, and transferred by digestion into animals. 



Ashes. — An immense quantity of water passes through the 

 vegetable during the period of its existence. This water eva- 

 porates at the surface of the leaves and necessarily leaves as 

 residue, in the plant, the salts which it contained in solution. 

 These salts compose the ashes, products evidently borrowed 

 from the earth, to which, after their death, vegetables give it 

 back again. 



As to the form in which these mineral products deposit 

 themselves in the vegetable tissue, nothing can be more vari- 

 able. We may remark, however, that among the products 

 of this nature, one of the most frequent and most abundant 

 is that pectinate of lime, discovered by M. Jacquelain in the 

 ligneous tissue of most plants. 



IV. — If, in the dark, plants act as simple filters which water 

 and gases pass through; if, under the influence of solar light 

 they act as reducing apparatus which decompose water, car- 

 bonic acid and oxide of ammonium, there are certain epochs 

 and certain organs in which the plant assumes another, and 

 altogether opposite part. 



Thus, if an embryo is to be made to germinate, a bud to be 

 unfolded, a flower to be fecundated, the plant which absorbed 



