HAVE PLANTS THE POWER TO CREATE ? 



variety nlso, we recoinmeTul a special premium for this of a framctl diploma." 

 Grateful Committee, and happy California! We must send out an ajrent, or f^o 

 ourselves, for the half does not seem to he generally known. We are a wonderful 

 iro-nhead i)eople, and it is only suri)risinj:; we do not yet own Culja, and the right 

 of way to the placers. 



< • • • > 



HAYE PLANTS THE POWER TO CREATE? 



Ix a former number of this journal I (lucried whether Prof. Lindley meant to 

 express it as his opinion that plants sometimes created silex and other minerals. 

 The editor answers in the ailirmativc, at least coiijecturally, and adds the instance 

 of cactuses containing oxalate of lime "without a trace of oxalic acid or lime 

 being fouud in the soil that supported them," and then queries : " Where does 

 our correspondent suppose it came from ?" 



I am far from being a follower of the ancient Greek philosophy in pronouncing 

 it an absurdity to suppose that something can be created out of nothing when 

 ai)plied to Omniiiotence ; but that He has endowed Ijrute matter with the power 

 of creation, I am not yet prepared to believe. The explanation of the foregoing 

 instances of apparent creation appears to me to be sufficiently simple. Instead 

 of taking for granted that because chemistry has not been able to detect these 

 constituents of the plants in the soil, they do not, therefore, exist in it, I would 

 prefer admitting that chemistry itself is at fault ; that its imperfections are known. 

 Is not its impotency manifest in failing to catch and cage the thousand odors which 

 float in the air ? What would be its success in attempting to exhibit the hundred- 

 millionth part of a grain of musk ? And yet the musk is there. We knoio it to 

 be there. 



Chemists have a limit to the power of their reagents. According to Devergie, 

 the extreme limit of the power of ammouio-nitrate of silver in the detection of 

 arsenic is the 400,000th part of a grain. Now let us imagine one-half of this 

 quantity to be removed from the solution, the other half, or 800,000th part of a 

 grain, would remain in the liquid, bidding defiance to all the scrutiny of chemistry. 



Not only may plants avail themselves of these (as we say with great latitude) 

 infinitely small particles of matter which no chemical means has ever been able to 

 detect, but we know the extraordinary length to which some of their radical fibres 

 extend. Now, before adopting Prof. Lindley's opinion, I would require the whole 

 of the earth through which every radical fibre of the plant ran to be rigorously 

 examined for the constituents in question ; I would also want to be assured that 

 no dust containing these constituents had lodged on any part of the plant during 

 its growth. 



These remarks are specially intended to be applied to silex, lime, and other 

 minerals. The presence of oxalic acid and other organic substances, is easily 

 accounted for ; the elements out of which they are formed are always at hand, 

 either in the air or the earth. 



Leaving, therefore, the act of creation in the hands of Omnipotence, as His 

 prerogative, I prefer limiting the power of plants to the act of aggregation, by 

 which inconceivably minute particles of matter, not rendered cognizable by any 

 chemical skill, are brought together into perceptible masses. 



John T. Plummer. 



We did not suppose our correspondent used the term " create" in its strict and 

 ally received sense ; that he had any reference to the "absurdity that some- 

 can be created out of nothing ;" or intended any allusion " to Omnipotence," 



