1882.] Solar Influence on Organisms. 731 
of an annual plant may be used, and any dry substance 
tied in it : in case of liquids, the fibre may be saturated with 
them. Liquids are good conductors, and must be guarded 
against. The smallest particle of juice, or sweat, on any- 
thing, when of higher age, will show its presence. 
The age of a substance here must not be taken to mean 
the time it has existed as such, but that age which the 
vegetable or animal that may be its source had when its 
connection with that source was severed. A leaf may be 
two months old, but it shows the age of the tree ; a drop of 
milk, that of the cow. I have permitted myself to call this 
“ organic age ; ” but as we have nothing to do with any 
other kind here the word “ age ” must always be taken in 
this sense. Any part of an organism — any seed, fruit, 
secretion, or any part of product whatever— has the same 
organic age as its source. The age of vegetables counts 
from the time they sprang from seed. Those propagated 
from roots or cuttings have the age as the original. A 
potato showed between 800 and goo years. The age of 
animals corresponds with what is commonly termed so ; 
but new-born young have the same organic age as the 
mother. 
This age-telling property of organisms does not seem to 
be destroyed by time. To what extent chemical change 
does it I cannot say. Considerably decayed wood retains 
it. Some kerosene, which caused the discovery of the 
age-telling property of liquids, showed constantly eight 
years : but this might have been due to some foreign sub- 
stance. 
It is, of course, plain to all that the interruption of the 
oscillations has nothing to do with our civil year as it is 
divided off in the almanac, but with a natural year. A 
natural year in our zone consists of an increase, a culmina- 
tion, and a decrease of the solar influence. It is the number 
of those annual culminations to which an organism has 
been exposed during life that is shown. In case of annual 
plants, grown during the increase or decrease, they will show 
a year though they have not been exposed to the maximum 
nfluence of the sun. So with animals less than a year old. 
The oscillations generally cease very abruptly, but when a 
considerable fraction of a year remains uncounted there is 
often a gradual subsidence into a pause. How it is with 
organisms under the equator, where the sun passes twice a 
year, I do not know. But a knowledge of it would throw 
some light on this question. 
That the sun has great influence on plants all know ; but 
3 b 2 
