August 1, 1895.] 



KNOWLEDGE. 



171 



the reign of Nabopolassar continued to increase during the 

 time of his successors, and was so firmly established that 

 the conquest of the country by Cyrus and his general, 

 Gobryas, hardly interrupted it. The inscriptions translated 

 above, therefore, belong to a period of unexampled 

 prosperity, and are only specimens of many thousand 

 similar texts, all of them important for the manners, 

 customs, and chronology of the time. They show how 



r-.iiue tablet, showing the impressions of the seals of 

 the scribes. 



ceaseless was the busmess activity and commercial enter- 

 prise of the Babylonians ; and the texts above translated 

 indicate to us that then, as now, the commercial prosperity 

 of a coimtry attracted foreigners, who settled there and 

 became as the natives of the land. Both Abil-Addu-natanu 

 and his foster-son Abil-Addu-amara were foreigners, most 

 likely from Syria, and in their own country must have 

 borne the names of Ben-Hadad-nathan and Ben-Hadad- 

 amara respectively. Bunanitum, however, was evidently 

 a Babylonian woman. 



One of the ways of writing the name of the god Abil-Addu ("the son 

 oi^ Iladad"), the Ben-Hadad of the Syrians. 



It will probably be some time before we get sufficient 

 data to enable us to realize the full extent of the intercourse 

 in ancient times between Mesopotamia and the west, but 

 it was probably much greater than we suppose it to have 

 been. There seems, indeed, to have been intercourse of a 

 somewhat intimate nattire between the Babylonians and 

 the Egyptians, even in prehistoric times, so much so that 

 at least one Egyptian word — that for "year," ronpet — was 

 regarded as a rebus, rendered "name (of) heaven," and 

 gave birth to the barbarous Babylonian compound, nni anna, 

 "name (of) heaven," which is the group used for sattti, 

 meaning "year." This implies a sufficient knowledge of 

 Egyptian, on the part of a r)abylonian, to decompose and 

 translate correctly the separated syllables of an Egyptian 

 word, probably some thousands of years before Christ, when 

 Babylonian was the linijua franca of the whole district 

 between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean. 



DIGESTION IN PLANTS. 



By J. Pentland-Smith, M.A., B.Sc. 



THE term digestion implies those processes by which 

 food material is rendered available for the nourish- 

 ment of the organism. We shall confine our 

 attention in this paper to a consideration of some 

 of the more remarkable cases of plant digestion. 

 The nutrient matter partaken of by the higher animals, 

 such as man, undergoes various complex changes before it 



can be taken into the circulation, and definite changes 

 occur in definite regions of the alimentary canal. To 

 begin with, the food is masticated in the mouth, where it 

 is at the same time bathed in a secretion poiu-ed forth by 

 the salivary glands. Not only does this fluid enable it to 

 pass more easily down the oesophagus or gullet into the 

 stomach, but it digests certain of its constituents. The 

 saUva contains a substance of complex composition, prob- 

 ably closely related to a class of chemical compounds 

 termed proteids. One of the essential distinctions of 

 proteids is that they consist of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, 

 nitrogen, and sulphur, united in percentage i^roportions 

 somewhat as follows : — Oxygen, 20i) ; hydrogen, 6-9 ; 

 nitrogen, 15-2 ; carbon, 51-5 ; sulphur, 0-3. Many of 

 them are constituents of food, and we shall have to speak 

 presently of the changes they undergo preparatory to 

 absorption. The proteid-like substance in the saliva, to 

 which we now refer, is called ptyalia. Owing to its 

 action the starchy portions of the food are converted into 

 sugar. The curious feature is that the ptyalin itself 

 remains unchanged. There are numerous examples of 

 analogous actions in the domain of chemistry, and they 

 play an important part in plant nutrition. 



A substance like ptyalin, capable of causing chemical 

 changes in other bodies while it itself remains un- 

 changed, is called a. ferment or enzyme. 

 When the food reaches the stomach it is subjected to 

 the action of a fluid secreted by special cells lining its 

 cavity. Some of these secrete an acid — hydrochloric 

 acid — and others secrete a ferment called pepsin. The 

 latter is only produced after the absorption of nitrogenous 

 matter by the cells ; its function is the conversion of 

 insoluble proteids into soluble compounds termed peptones. 

 It may happen that all the food material has not been 

 rendered available for the animal's nourishment by the time 

 it leaves the 

 stomach. We 

 find that 



thereisapro- . • - ■ x^* . n . , ■ -ffat^ 



vision made IbS'\''' ^'^-■X^ , I ' ■:, ''^TltX'' ^-r 



to meet this 

 contingency, 

 for into the 

 commence- 

 ment of the 

 intestine 

 fluids are 

 poured, which 

 are secreted 

 by the liver 

 and pancreas. 

 The bile, se- 

 creted by the 

 liver, contains 

 a ferment 

 that converts 

 starch into 

 sugar, and the 

 pancrea t ic 

 juice contains 

 three fer- 

 ments : tryp- 

 sin, which 



converts pro- ^la. l- — Longitudinal Section of Maize (Zea 



fD;rIaiTitr.r.on -Vai>; Fruit, end., yellow dense portion of en- 



temsmtopep- ^g^j,^^^^. ^^_ epithelium of ecutellum; v.b., 



tones the vascular bundles ; p.r., primary root. 



action of 



pepsin — but which possesses the additional property of 



carrying the decomposition a stage further, breaking up 



. . . V 6 



