496 Theory of the Nutrition [BOOK in. 



tracted researches into the influence of light on vegetation 

 (1782-1788), and founded on their results a theory of nutri- 

 tion, which he published in 1800 in a tediously prolix work in 

 five volumes entitled, 'Physiologic vegetale.' In this work 

 some valuable matter was concealed in a host of unimportant 

 details and tiresome displays of rhetoric, which for the most 

 part are beside the question. But it must be acknowledged 

 that Senebier was better provided with chemical knowledge 

 than Ingen-Houss, and that he brought together all the scat- 

 tered facts that the chemical literature of the day offered, in 

 order to obtain a more complete representation of the pro- 

 cesses of nutrition. It was of especial importance at that time 

 to insist on the principle that the processes of nutrition within 

 the plant must be judged by the general laws of chemistry ; 

 organised beings, said Senebier, are the stage, on which the 

 affinities of the constituents of earth, water, and air mutually 

 influence each other ; the decompositions however are gene- 

 rally the result of the influence of light, which separates the 

 oxygen of the carbon dioxide in the green parts of plants. He 

 insists (II. p. 304) upon this among other facts, that the simple 

 constituents of all plants are the same, and the differences are 

 only quantitative. He then brings before us the simple and 

 compound constituents of plants one after the other, and 

 among them light and heat figure as material substances, in ac- 

 cdrdance with the view of the time. He treats at great length the 

 old question of the meaning of the salts in the plant, and it is 



pastor at Chancy, and in 1773 librarian of Geneva. At this time, among 

 other literary labours, he translated Spallanzani's more important writings ; 

 he also studied chemistry under Tingry, and carried out his researches into 

 the influence of light. In 1791 he wrote an article for the 'Encyclopaedic 

 methodique ' on vegetable physiology. The revolution in Geneva drove him 

 into the Canton Vaud, and there he composed his ' Physiologic vegetale,' 

 in five volumes. He returned to Geneva in 1799 and took part in a new 

 translation of the Bible. He died in that city in 1809 ('Biographic 

 Universelle '). 



