PHITO-PHYSIOLOGY. 267 



water. The oxygen gas of plants is therefore a result 

 only of the decomposition of water in an inorganic man- 

 ner by the agency of light, or virtually the separation 

 only of the oxygen that is clinging to the water. 



1416. Through the process of respiration in the plant 

 carbonic acid has been formed and excreted. For the 

 mucus becomes oxydized, and thereby the process also 

 of fermentation, the product of which is carbonic acid, is 

 promoted. 



1417. The respiratory process of the leaves is the per- 

 fected process of fermentation in the stalk, in which 

 finally, namely, in the fruit-saps, the separation of both 

 the products of fermentation, the vinous and acetic, is 

 prepared. 



1418. Just as acids and sugar originate in the stalk, 

 so in the foliage does their electrical antagonism, or the 

 setherial oils and perfumes. Sweet scents or perfumes 

 are properties of the air, and therefore originate also with 

 the aerial process. This is retrospectively a proof that 

 the leaf-process is the respiratory process. 



1419. Through the leaves, with which the whole sur- 

 face of the earth is covered, the planet respires, and 

 thereby the surface of the earth principally obtains its 

 electricity. 



1420. Vegetation must therefore effect an important 

 change in the earth's electricity. The earth must be 

 differently polarized after, to what it was before, the fall of 

 the leaf. 



1421. Thereby the northern hemisphere is differently 

 polarized to the southern, because the latter has less soil 

 than the former. 



b. Wood-process Nutrition. 



14-22. As most of the spiral vessels are collected toge- 

 ther in the body of wood, and finally in the leaves issue 

 forth quite free and naked into the air, so must the wood 

 conduct for the most part air into the plant. The polari- 

 zation of the other systems, of the liber and the bark, 

 must therefore proceed from the body of wood. 



