Hick : Designation of Certain Functions of Plants. 123 



It is perhaps worthy of note that this limited application of the 

 term appears to be a ^ery recent innovation, and that up to within a 

 few years ago, when made use of by botanists, it was generally 

 employed in a wider sense. By Schleiden, Lindley, Henfrey, and 

 others, it appears to have been regarded as generic rather than specific? 

 and to have covered all the metamorphoses by which the materials 

 absorbed by a plant were changed into substances useful for the 

 purposes of nutrition. But by Sachs it has been restricted in the 

 manner indicated above, and it is probably due in a great measure to 

 his example and influence that this restriction has been so generally 

 adopted by later writers, and that one of a number of constructive 

 processes occurring within the tissues of plants has now monopolised a 

 term that was previously often applied to the whole series. 



Be this, however, as it may, the fact remains that a most unsuitable 

 designation is now commonly applied to one of the most important 

 functions of plants, and, so far as I am aware, no competent authority 

 has addressed himself to the task of removing the difficulty which this 

 entails by suggesting a more appropriate one. In the work referred 

 to at the commencement. Dr. Vines states that though objecting to 

 *' assimilation," he is not quite in a position to replace it by a better 

 name, and consistently avoids the use of the word altogether. This is 

 certainly one mode of escaping the difficulty, but it can only be 

 regarded as a temporary expedient, especially if the reviving interest in 

 plant physiology should continue to increase, and this branch of 

 botanical science take its legitimate place in the botanical teaching of 

 the country. Hence the desirability of some attempt being made, 

 without further delay, to get rid of a name whose unsuitability is 

 probably its chief characteristic, and to substitute another or others 

 which shall more faithfully reflect the phenomena to which it refers. 



An additional circumstance, pointing the same moral, is found in the 

 fact that with regard to another function of plants, of at least equal if 

 not of greater importance, viz., the formation of nitrogenous organic 

 bodies from compounds of ammonia, nitric acid, and the carbohy- 

 drates, we are also in a position of some inconvenience. In none of 

 the text-books usually read by students does this fundamental con- 

 structive process receive a special designation, and, in most of them, 

 few or no details are given with respect to it, though it is assumed as 

 the basis of much of the physiology they contain. 



Under these circumstances, I venture to submit to the consideration 

 of botanists a set of terms for the two Jundamental and most import- 

 ant/unctions of plants which I have been in the habit of using privately 



