PLANTS AS ELECTRIC MACHINES. 19 1 



CHAPTER XXII. 



PLANTS AS ELECTRIC MACHINES. 



TV/TATTER has been classified into two grand 

 divisions, ORGANIC and INORGANIC. 



By microscopic examination of the structure of 

 plants, and also of animals, they are found to be 

 composed of congeries of tubes, resembling the 

 multitude of pipes in an organ : hence the term, 

 organic, originated in contradistinction to the 

 grouping of molecules into crystals by electro- 

 magnetism, denoted inorganic formations. 



The union of molecules by electro-magnetism 

 in liquid, and aeriform, and various other states, 

 without any crystalline structure, is designated 

 AMORPHOUS. 



The total number and quantity of organic re- 

 mains on the surface and in the strata of the earth 

 are inconceivably great. Nearly half of the earth's 

 surface is covered with animal and vegetable fos- 

 siliferous deposits : many of the latter are several 

 thousand feet in thickness. They abound on 

 mountains at an elevation of more than sixteen 

 thousand feet above the level of the sea, in strata 

 on the Himalayas and the Andes, and are found 

 at the bottom of the ocean at a greater number of 



