THE PLANT AND ITS SURROUNDINGS. 5 



domain of chemistry should be the more deplored. 

 Be that as it may, he handed on to succeeding 

 generations some weighty errors as regards plant- 

 life, and taught the agriculturist to regard chemical 

 analyses of soils and plant ashes with a reverence 

 which obstructed progress for some time. As a 

 set-off to this we must place his contributions 

 to the destruction of the bugbear vitalism, which 

 was simply preventing enquiry, and his services 

 in bringing together and sifting with power and 

 originality all that had been then acquired as 

 regards the chemistry of the plant, the soil, and 

 the atmosphere. 



That Liebig was indispensable in 1840- 18 50 is 

 one thing ; but that his influence should extend to 

 the present day is quite another, and his inevitable 

 mistakes were almost as powerful for future evil, 

 as his clear exposition of the chemistry of his day 

 was productive of immediate good. 



Boussingault, working at the same time, 1837- 

 1855, but experimentally with the living plant, 

 taught us more about these matters than any 

 investigator of the time, though it is very pro- 

 bable that the stimulus of Liebig's speculations, 

 good and bad, had its effect in impelling Bous- 

 singault to devote his splendid methods to 

 problems of plant-nutrition. Boussingault's con- 

 tributions to our knowledge of the composition 

 of the dead plant cannot be over-estimated ; 

 but he did more than this, because he so clearly 

 apprehended the necessity for asking his questions 

 directly of the living plant, instead of deducing 



