416 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



gluten. After a fortnight, at a temperature of 60°, both the 

 starch and the gluten will commence to decompose. 



The soil will present conditions more favorable to rapid decom- 

 position, whenever the root of a growing plant is present. I 

 think I shall be able to show you that water has functions when 

 the root of a growing plant is present ; just as different as a gal- 

 vanic battery when its circuit is completed and when it is not. 

 If you will analyze a bullock's blood, or, more properly perhaps, 

 the blood of a man, you will iSnd their constituents have the 

 power of exciting vegetation, from supplying necessary consti- 

 tuents to insure growth that you cannot get from lower sources. 

 These are higher than you would get if you used the very food 

 on which that bullock fed ; much higher than if you used the 

 pabulum which created his food. You will find in the blood of 

 man a certain amount of iron. Now, I claim that one grain of 

 iron separated from the blood of man would have probably medi- 

 cinally, and certainly in the propagation of organic life as a fer- 

 tilizer, many times the power of a scale from the blacksmith's 

 forge. The chemist would decide them to be alike. 



Many years ago it was claimed that plants were sustained 

 entirely by material in a proximate condition, but it was not 

 defined what those proximate conditions were. At a later date, 

 Liebig claimed that the same constituents that formed the ashes 

 of the plant were its proper food. He also claimed that it was 

 necessary to have an excitant to cause the plants to take up that 

 food ; and that ammonia was this excitant. He further claimed 

 that this was furnished from the atmosphere by dews and rains 

 falling through it, and that the decay of every organism furnished 

 organic portions in a gaseous form to the atmosphere, while 

 descending rain and dews brought them down to the soil, where 

 they acted upon the plant as an excitant. 



Some English chemists, wishing to seem original, and unwil- 

 ling to allow credit to a German, commenced some fourteen years 

 ago to attack Liebig; they said the value of manure was in pro- 

 portion to the ammonia it contained. They went on till they 

 convinced each other, and until I have heard gentlemen in this 

 club asserting, that ammonia was direct food for the plant. But 

 the doctrine they have advocated in England for fourteen years 

 is now pretty generally abandoned, Liebig claimed that ammo- 

 nia could be obtained, when the condition of the soil required it, 

 from the atmosphere alone. 



