140 THE ART OF CULTURE. 



The quantity of gluten, vegetable albumen, and 

 mucilage, will augment when plants are supplied 

 with an excess of food containing nitrogen ; and 

 ammoniacal salts will remain in the sap, when, for 

 example, in the culture of the beet, we manure the 

 soil with a highly nitrogenous substance, or when 

 we suppress the functions of the leaves by removing 

 them from the plant. 



We know that the ananas is scarcely eatable in 

 its wild state, and that it shoots forth a great quan- 

 tity of leaves when treated with rich animal manure, 

 without the fruit on that account acquiring a large 

 amount of sugar ; that the quantity of starch in 

 potatoes increases when the soil contains much 

 humus, but decreases when the soil is manured with 

 strong animal manure, although then the number of 

 cells increases, the potatoes acquiring in the first 

 case a mealy, in the second ^ soapy, consistence. 

 Beet-roots taken from a barren, sandy soil contain 

 a maximum of sugar, and no ammoniacal salts ; and 

 the Teltowa parsnep loses its mealy state in a 

 manured land, because there all the circumstances 

 necessary for the formation of cells are united.* 



An abnormal! production of certain component 

 parts of plants presupposes a power and capability 

 of assimilation to which the most powerful chemical 

 action cannot be compared. The best idea of it may 

 be formed by considering that it surpasses in power 

 the strongest galvanic battery, with w^hich we are 

 not able to separate the oxygen from carbonic acid. 

 The affinity of chlorine for hydrogen, and its power 

 to decompose water under the influence of light 



* Children fed upon arrow-root, salep, or indeed any kind of amyla- 

 ceous food, which does not contain ingredients fitted for the formation 

 of bones and muscles, become fat, and acquire much embonpoint; their 

 limbs appear full, but they do not acquire strength, nor are their organs 

 properly developed. — L. 



t Abnormal^ (Lat. ab, from, and norma, a rule,) Any thing without, 

 or contrary to, system or rule. In botany, if a flower has five petals, 

 the rule is, that it should have the same number of stamens, or some 

 regular multiple of that number ; if it has only four or six stamens, 

 the flower is abnormal. 



