The Chemical Statics of Organised Beings. 5 



And as if, in these great phenomena, all must be connected 

 with causes which appear the most distant from them, we must 

 moreover remark how the oxide of ammonium, the nitric acid, 

 from which plants borrow a part of their azote, are themselves 

 almost always derived from the action of the great electric sparks 

 which flash forth in stormy clouds, and which (furrowing the air 

 through a vast extent) produce there the nitrate of ammonia 

 which analysis detects in it. 



Thus, from the craters of those volcanoes whose convulsions 

 so often agitate the crust of the globe, continually escapes car- 

 bonic acid, the principal nutriment of plants ; from the atmo- 

 sphere flashing with lightnings, and from the midst of the 

 tempest itself, there descends upon the earth the other and no 

 less indispensable nutriment of plants, that whence they derive 

 almost all their azote, the nitrate of ammonia, contained in storm- 

 showers. Might not this be called, as it were, an idea of that 

 chaos of which the Bible speaks, of those times of disorder and 

 of tumult of the elements which preceded the appearance of 

 organised beings upon the earth ? 



But scarcely are the carbonic acid and the nitrate of ammonia 

 produced, than a form more calm, although not of inferior 

 energy, comes to put them in action ; it is light. Through 

 her influence, the carbonic acid yields its carbon, the water its 

 hydrogen, and the nitrate of ammonia its azote. These elements 

 unite, organised matters form, and the earth puts on its rich 

 carpet of verdure. 



It is, then, by continually absorbing a real force, the light and 

 the heat emanating from the sun, that plants perform their func- 

 tions, and that they produce this immense quantity of organised 

 or organic matter, pasture destined for the consumption of the 

 animal kingdom. And if we add, that animals on their part 

 produce heat and force in consuming what the vegetable kingdom * 

 has produced and has slowly accumulated, does it not seem that 

 the ultimate end of all these phenomena, their most general 

 formula, reveals itself to our sight? 



The atmosphere appears to us as containing the primary sub- 

 stances of all organisation, volcanoes and storms as the labora- 

 tories in which were first produced the carbonic acid and the 

 nitrate of ammonia which life required for its manifestation or its 

 multiplication. 



In aid of these comes light, and developes the vegetable king- 

 dom, immense producer of organic matter: plants absorb the 

 chemical force which they derive from the sun to decompose 

 carbonic acid, water, and nitrate of ammonia; as if plants real- 



[ * " Le regne animal" in the original; but this is obviously an error. — 

 Edit. Phil. Mag.] 



B 3 



