CHAP. IJL] VEGETAL ASSIMILATION AND DIS-ASSIMILATION. 113 



before being drawn away and utilized, these substances in reserve 

 often undergo metamorphoses. 



The fecula, deposited in autumn in the ligneous body of the 

 trees, is often in spring transformed into sugar, which, in certain 

 plants, the maple, for example, mixes largely with the ascending 

 sap. MM. Payen and Persoz have shown that there is first of 

 all produced a matter called by them diastasis. This matter has 

 the property of rendering the fecula soluble, by transforming it 

 first into dextrine, then into sugar. It produces this isomeric 

 transformation by means of very small quantities, for it is capable 

 of rendering soluble five thousand times its own weight of fecula. 



As to the albuminoidal substances in reserve in expectation of 

 the spring sap, such as starch, sugar, inuline, and fat, certain 

 among them, not having lost any of their solubility, are simply 

 seized anew, drawn away, and finally assimilated. Others also 

 undergo their isomeric modifications, specially in germination. 

 Thus, during the germination of the leguminous plants, caseine 

 is metamorphosed into albumine in the cotyledons. In the 

 gramineous plants, the gluten of the endosperm, which is insoluble 

 in water, is dissolved during germination, and is conveyed into 

 the plantule. The energetic oxydation which always accompanies 

 germination also determines the formation of regressive sub- 

 stances, for example, asparagin, which is perhaps re-assimilated 

 at a later period. 



A certain portion of carbonated hydrates is also totally burned, 

 converted into water and carbonic acid by vital oxydation. In 

 this case, the hydrates are burned either in the anatomical 

 elements, or in the sap of the plant, as they are in the blood of 

 the animal, proving once more that there is no antagonism 

 between the vegetal kingdom and the animal kingdom, and that 

 essentially the primordial phenomena of life are identica.1 in the 

 two kingdoms. 



As Cl. Bernard has very well observed, if an animal eats the 

 sugar accumulated in beet-root, that does not prove that this 

 sugar was made for him. On the contrary, it was destined (if 



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