THE SOIJECES OE THE NITEOGEH OE VEGETATION, ETC. 433 
PAET FIEST. 
GENEEAL HISTOET, AND STATEMENT OE THE QUESTION. 
Section I.— INTEODHCTION, AND EAELT HISTOET. 
The facts at the present time generally accepted regarding the ultimate composition, 
and the sources of the constituents, of plants, have, for the most part, received their 
preponderating weight of proof within the limits of the present centmy. But it is to 
the century preceding it that we must look for the establishment of much that was 
essential as the foundation of those advances which have since been made. 
Whatever may be the value at present attached to the particular views of Hales 
regarding the composition and the sources of vegetable matter, we must accord to his 
labours, in the early part of the eighteenth century, the merit of having been guided by 
a proper spirit of experimental inquiry. Nor did he fail in applying to good account, 
and even in extending, the then existing knowledge of the material things around him 
which were apparently involved in the mysterious processes of vegetable growth. 
With our present knowledge, however, of the general composition of plants, and of 
the sources of their constituents, it is easy to see how essential was a proper under- 
standing of the chemistry of the air, and of water, to any trire conceptions of the mate- 
rial changes involved in the vegetative process. It can, indeed, hardly excite surprise, 
that what may be called the germs of om' present krrowledge of the chemistry of plairt- 
growth came forth almost simultaneously with the now adopted views of the compo- 
sition of those universal, though not exclusive, media of vegetation — « 2 >, and water. 
Accordingly, it is between the dates of 1770 and 1800 that we find Black, Scheele, 
Peiestley, Kwoisiee, Cavexdish, and Watt establishing for us the facts that common 
air consists chiefly of nitrogen and oxygeir, with a little carboiric acid, that carbonic 
acid itself is composed of carboir and oxygen ; and that water is composed of hydrogen 
and oxygen ; and it is Tvithin the same period that Peiestley and Ingenhousz, Senne- 
biee and Woodhohse, laboured to show the mutual relations of these bodies and vege- 
table growth. 
But the observ’ers last mentioned seem to have had more prominently iir view the 
question of the influence of plants upon the media with which they were surrounded, 
than that of the influence of these media in contributing materially to the increased 
substance of plants themselves. Following closely on their footsteps, both in point of 
time and in general plan of research, came De Saussuee. His labours were conducted 
towards the end of the last century and in the beginning of the present one ; and their 
results, and the arguments he founded upon them, published by him in 1804, may be 
said to have indicated, if not indeed established, many of the most important facts with 
which we are yet acquainted regarding the sources of the constituents stored up by the 
growing plant. To De Saussuee we owe the experimental, and even quantitative, illus- 
tration of the fact, that plants in sunlight increase in their amounts of carbon, hydro- 
gen, and oxygen, at the expense of carbonic acid and of water. It is remarkable, too, 
that, in the case of the main experiment he cites on the point, he, with his very imper- 
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