SKETCH OF J. B. BOUSSINGAULT. 841 



monia contained in tlie Rain, Snow, Dew, and Fog collected at 

 Liebf rauenberg " ; on " The Method of Estimation of Nitric Acid 

 in Presence of Organic Matters"; on "The Quantity of Nitric 

 Acid contained in Rain, Fog, and Dew " ; on " The Influence of 

 Vegetable Mold on the Nitrification of Organic Nitrogenous Mat- 

 ter used as Manure " ; on the inquiry " Whether Nitrogen is 

 emitted during the Decomposition of Carbonic Acid by Leaves " ; 

 on " The Relation between the Volume of Acid decomposed and 

 that of Freed Oxygen"; and many others. "He verified," says 

 M. Tissandier, " the fact, only half seen by his predecessors, that 

 plants fix the carbon contained in the carbonic acid of the air ; he 

 also proved definitely that plants decompose water to appropriate 

 its hydrogen to themselves. He determined that plants derive 

 nitrogen from the soil, and that, according to Lavoisier, in the 

 vegetable kingdom as in the laboratory, ' nothing is created, noth- 

 ing lost.' What is put into the soil as manure appears again in 

 the plant as the crop." " Undoubtedly," says M. Deh^rain, " the 

 services which he has rendered to agricultural science by demon- 

 strating the intervention of combined nitrogen in animal or vege- 

 table nutrition are immense. The estimation of the value of 

 rations and of manures rests upon principles that he has laid 

 •down ; but whatever admiration we may feel for this part of his 

 work, however great may be its practical utility, M. Boussingault 

 has left it unfinished, and has never pointed out how atmospheric 

 nitrogen is drawn into the movement of life." 



M. Boussingault's eldest daughter having been married to a 

 son of Jacob Holtzer, proprietor of extensive iron- works on the 

 Loire, his son-in-law built him a spacious laboratory at the shops. 

 Having been driven from Alsace by the Franco-German War, he 

 afterward spent a considerable part of the year at this place, 

 where he made his studies upon iron and steel. M. Boussingault 

 published a memoir on the extraction of oxygen from the atmos- 

 phere by means of baryta, and conducted an investigation, with 

 M. Dumas, of the proportions in which the constituents of the at- 

 mosphere are mingled. His " Rural Economy " was published in 

 1844, and an English translation in 1845. Revised and enlarged, 

 and embodying the fruit of years of additional experiments, it 

 was given forth in a new form, in 1861-'64, as "Agronomie, Chimie 

 Agricole, et Physiologic," in three volumes. M. Boussingault was 

 made a grand officer of the Legion of Honor in 1876. He received 

 the Th^nard medal of the " Society d'Encouragement " in 1872, and 

 the Copley medal of the Royal Society of England in 1878. These 

 medals he kept very carefully, along with the more modest medal 

 which Bolivar had given him on their parting, and of which he 

 thought more than of either of the others, for it was associated 

 with the bright days of the South American life of his youth. 



