ON THE VITALISTIC VIEW OF NATURE. 391 



of very valuable but unconnected researches in all the 

 different countries where chemistry was cultivated. 

 Priestley, in England, had noticed the purifying effect 

 of plants on air ; De Saussure, in a series of remarkable 

 experiments, carried on in the last years of the eighteenth 

 century at Geneva, established the fact that in sunlight 

 plants increase the quantity of carbon and other con- 

 stituents in their tissues. Ingenhousz in Holland and 

 Senebier in France had shown that in the presence of 

 sunlight bubbles of oxygen gas are given off by plants 

 when plunged under water, and had traced this oxygen 

 to its source, the carbonic acid in the atmosphere. Sir 

 Humphry Davy had applied chemistry to agriculture ; 

 and, much later, German physiologists like Tiedemann 

 and Johannes Mliller had recognised the necessity of 

 explaining the processes in the living body chemically. 

 All these labours, however, were detached, and their 

 value was little known. It was therefore a very timely 

 proposal which issued from the British Association in 

 1839, that a report on the present state of organic 

 chemistry should be drawn up. For this task no less 

 a person than Justus Liebig was selected. 1 The event 



Liebig, his Life and Work." Bis- 

 choffs address contains a very full 

 discussion of Liebig's vitalistic sym- 

 pathies. His great influence was 



1 The sources of information on 

 Liebig's great work in revolutionis- 

 ing the science of life through his 

 application of organic chemistry to 

 agriculture and physiology are nu- 

 merous. In particular there are 

 two addresses by Vogel and von 

 Bischoff, delivered in the Munich 

 Academy in 1874,Hofmann's "Fara- 

 day" lecture, delivered in the Royal 

 Institution in 1875, and a very 

 able summary, drawn mainly from 

 these sources by Mr W. A. Shen- 

 stone, in Cassell's ' Century Science ' 



established as much by his special 

 scientific discoveries as by his 

 method of teaching, by his early 

 attempts to popularise science and 

 make it an educational power 

 through his well-known ' Familiar 

 Letters.' He was in this respect a 

 pioneer, as after him Helmholtz and 

 Du Bois-Reymond were pioneers in 

 spreading scientific ideas by means 



Series (1895), entitled "Justus von of popular lectures and addresses. 



