Chlorophyl. 179 



a leaf be artificially restrained in an inverted position it will twist its 

 stem in an apparent effort to right itself and expose the right side to the 

 light. But if prevented from turning, in the course of time the carbonic 

 action may cease in some leaves entirely. 



The rays below the visible spectrum that is, the exclusively heat 

 ra ys have nothing to do with the chlorophyl function of starch mak- 

 ing. A proper temperature is essential, but no amount of dark heat 

 alone will produce the effect. To get a conception of the mechanical 

 process involved here we must consider the physical difference between 

 a ray of dark heat and a ray of yellow light. As explained in Chap. 

 40, they are both waves of the same material medium, and both ad- 

 vance with the same rapidity. But the yellow waves are ioo 2 000 ' of 

 an, inch in length, and strike an opposing object at the rate of 543 

 trillions in a second, while the dark rays are composed of waves sev- 

 eral times longer and several times fewer per second. What is said in 

 Chapters 39 and 40 of the fundamental tone or note of vibrating bodies 

 will help us to comprehend how waves of a certain particular swing or 

 vibration are essential to the setting up a vibration in any ponderable 

 body. Now, knowing by experiment that the ether waves of a particu- 

 lar time and movement are able to set up such a vibration in the min- 

 eral gas, carbonic acid, that the affinity of its two elements for each 

 other is neutralized, and at the same time to set up such an activity in 

 the organized chlorophyl zoospore that new combinations between the 

 elements of the mineral and those of the organism are possible, we con- 

 clude that the fundamental note in both bodies has been vibrated and 

 that they are tuned in unison with each other. But more than that, 

 the organism, at least, has been brought into tune by the action of the 

 ethereal radiant energy. If we consider the exceedingly fickle and mo- 

 bile constitution of every compound containing nitrogen, it will appear 

 how easily the protoplasmic compound may be influenced and molecu- 

 larly rearranged. It is not necessary to suppose that the action set up 

 in the organism bj r the vibrating medium is a vibration of its atoms in 

 the time or at the rate of the original vibrating medium. No organic 

 body could stand such a rate of motion without disintegration and de- 

 struction. But there is a rearrangement of the molecules of the plastic 

 organism by the vibratory force, and, consequently, a new system of 

 intermolecular spacing. It is the form of the intermolecular spaces 

 that gives the fundamental note, because it is through these spaces that 

 the movement of the vibrating ether is propagated, and it depends on 

 the form of these spaces what the length of the waves shall be that get 

 through them. Thus the fundamental tone of a body played upon by 

 light as well as the tone of sound in a resonator, depends on the form 

 of the internal spaces into which the vibration is introduced, and the 



