1816. | Comparison of Allumen with Gluten. 455 
duced; yet it appears to me that we have sufficient grounds for 
concluding that it is effected by the operation of buoyant gases. 
Haying arrived at this conclusion, it is almost impossible to with- 
draw the mind from contemplating, or to contemplate without ad- 
miring, the various combinations dependant on the law of gravity— 
so vast in their extent, yet so minute in their application. When 
the Author of the Sacred Volume wishes to impart a sublime idea 
of infinite power, he tells us that God said, * Let there be light, 
and there was light.” To the philosophic mind, which contem- 
plates that mighty influence which binds the spheres, that univer- 
sality which pervades all nature, and that wonderful adaptation to 
almost every varied purpose of utility, it must appear that there 
was a display of infinite wisdom equally sublime when God said, 
‘* Let matter gravitate.” 
Artic.e VII. 
A Comparison of Albumen with Gluten. By H. F. Link* 
Fourcroy first remarked the presence of albumen in vegetables. 
The expressed juice of cresses, cabbage, scurvy grass, deposited, on 
standing, a greenish substance, which, when boiled, precipitated a 
yellowish-grey flocky matter very similar to animal albumen. After- 
wards albumen was detected in a variety of vegetable bodies. 
Vauquelin found it in the sap of the carica papaya, Einhof in 
potatoes, Schrader in cabbage, Grotthus in the pollen of tulips, 
&c.; not to mention the observations made during the preparation 
of sugar from beet. From all this it appears indispatable that a 
substance is found in plants similar to animal albumen. Proust 
alone has hesitated about applying this name to vegetable albumen, 
and considered the matter as at least very much mixed with 
gluten. 
All that is precipitated from the sap of plants by boiling in flocks 
always appeared to me so similar to gluten, that I have not been 
able to prevail on myself to consider it as a peculiar substance. 
There is, indeed, this difference, that the former substance is found 
dissolved in the sap of plants, and is only brought into a solid state 
by heat, while the gluten exists already in a solid state in wheat 
flour. But this is not sufficient to constitute distinct species. We 
can only say that in wheat flour the same substance occurs in a solid 
state which is found liquid and in solution in the sap of cabbage. I 
consider it, therefore, as necessary to compare coagulated albumen 
with the gluten of plants, in order to determine whether the 
albumen of plants bears the greater resemblance to anima! albumen 
* Translated from Schweigger’s Journal, vol. xiv. p. 294, October, 1815. 
