190 VEGETATION AND THE ATMOSPHERE. 
studied separately: the sexual organs consumed 132 measures of oxygen, and 
the rest of the flower only 30. . ~ 
After fecundation, the fruit begins to be developed and the plant to nourish 
it. Not only does the plant furnish it with the matter accumulated in its own 
tissues, but with a quantity greater still, which it burns by a respiration proper 
to it. The whole lite of the vegetable seems then exclusively devoted to the 
accomplishment of this last duty of nourishing the fruit. In this task it im- 
poverishes itself; the beet and the cane dispense all the sugar they possessed, 
every plant exhausts the provisions which it had accumulated in the period of 
its youth, and when the fruit is mature, the vegetable, if it is annual, is reduced 
to a dry skeleton, and if it is perennial, sinks into the repose of winter, to re- 
cover its forees and recommence, the following year, its providential function. 
The subject under consideration, besides the questions of detail which I pro- 
posed to examine, contains a great truth with which I shall conclude, namely, 
that our world does not suffice for itself, because it is deficient in force; but it 
receives this from the sun, diffused upon it in the form of rays. And it is by 
virtue of this:action that life on the globe is transmitted under two antagonis- 
tie forms—vegetable life, which accumulates force by creating organic matter, 
and animal lite, which consumes and dissipates that which the sun furnishes, 
that which vegetables absorb and treasure up. 
