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EOTAL HOETICTJLTTTBAL SOCIETY. 



formed fleshy stems, shoots, leaves or other organs, and then, like 

 a germinating potato, live at the expense of the fleshy organism, 

 which is at length completely exhausted — which frequently happens 

 for many generations, as the older portions die off and the young 

 shoots are developed. This happens especially when the plants 

 are in rich ground up to the time of flowering, when the young 

 shoots, as also the blossoms, live from the nutritive matter laid up 

 in the older stems. These phenomena are easily explicable from 

 the laws of anaphytosis, though not comprehensible from those of 

 metamorphosis. It is never possible to raise a plant from germi- 

 nation into a perfect individual in pure sand, in distilled water, or 

 in pure air, without any nutriment from soil. All attempts, since 

 the days of Bonnet and De Greer, have failed. Plants raised from 

 seeds germinating without soil die off as soon as the nutriment 

 which was laid up in the albumen or cotyledons is exhausted. 

 No one has ever been able to raise plants from germinating seed, 

 irrigated with water containing carbonic acid, or in air charged 

 with carbonic acid ; carbonic acid acts as a poison on germinating 

 plants, as it does on animals ; and it has been a mere superstition 

 of many savans, causing them to dream of the possibility of such 

 aerial nutriment, while they do not see with open eyes the real 

 course of nutriment ; and it can only be a matter of surprise that 

 so many cleave more to the old botanical superstition than to 

 reality. 



The knowledge of the fact that so-called pure water, pure spring- 

 water, pump-water, river-water, contains an inexhaustible supply 

 of nutriment — the knowledge that water is the real staple of 

 nourishment to plants, as also of the gradual development of the 

 constituents of raw and elaborated sap from the ingredients in 

 water, is calculated to throw light on many puzzling phenomena in 

 vegetable physiology and culture ; and it is to be hoped that it 

 may contribute to the understanding of many circumstances of 

 vegetable nutrition which were formerly explained artificially and 

 unnaturally, from ignorance of circumstances which might have 

 suggested a better explanation. The art of making water nutritious 

 will be the true aim of horticulture and agriculture. 



