ANALYSIS OF PLANTS. 
33 
and outward movement : a peripheral force is given to the nutritive matters in the early 
stages of growth. It is perhaps premature to attempt to speculate upon the ends which 
are secured by the supposed law ; but one or two remarks may be offered upon the subject. 
First, the products rich in elements required by all plants, are speedily sent back to the 
soil, for an early and renewed use : the leaf, the rind and husk, the tender stem, are all 
annual growths, and return annually to the soil to undergo decay. The fruit, with its 
envelopes, is situated at the extremity of a floral branch or bud : it is at the end of the 
channel of the coursing fluids; and its influence robs the base or bottom of the straw of a 
portion of its inorganic matter, that an accumulation may be secured in parts which are 
specially appropriated to the use of animals. The bottom of the straw has less nutritive 
matter than the top : it has moved upwards; but the usual supply is diminishing in con¬ 
sequence of age, and hence its deficiency remains to the end. Pea vines die upwards : 
their main stalk ceases to elaborate or arrest the nutritive matter; and it often presents 
the appearance of death, while the upper leaves and fruit are yet fresh : it is robbed by 
the activity of the superior organs. So numerous are the instances of this kind, that we 
can scarcely refuse to admit the law of an upward and outward force in the distribution 
of nutritive matters. 
Another important result, is the perfection of the seed and fruit. This seems to be the 
great end to be secured ; and so rare is a failure of this end, that we scarcely consider the 
law which secures the result : it is regarded as a matter of course. A stone projected into 
the air, surely returns to the ground, but the law of gravitation is rarely thought of; so the 
seed ripens by an accumulation of nutritive matters scarcely less surely, and, as in the case 
of gravitation, we forget there is any law in operation. Though a vast amount of nutritive 
matter is locked up in a forest, this law still operates. There is no centralization of 
important substances in the interior of the wood : in the growth even of the trunk of an oak 
of a thousand summers, the outward and upward forces, are still recognizable in the 
percentage of ash in the wood of the outside, the leaves, and extreme branches. 
The action of vegetables upon the nutritive matters in the soil is in accordance with 
the same law : we can not fail to recognize the upward movement. The roots bring up, 
from the deepest parts of the soil to which they can penetrate, the acids and bases which 
are required to sustain life : the leaves and annual stalks receive a large share of it; these 
fall upon the surface, where they undergo decay ; and hence upon the surface, the matter 
which has been drawn from the deepest soil, is left where it. is required. We often see roots 
shooting upward into the richer stratum at the top ; still, when not thus invited by a richer 
storehouse at the surface, they penetrate deeply and widely. 
In the constitution of the soil, no depth has been reached, which has been on that ac¬ 
count deficient in the elements of nutrition. Organic matter exists in the Albany clay, at 
the depth of at least fifty feet, and at hundreds of feet in the calcareous shale of the Salt 
group. 
In confirmation of what has been stated in the foregoing paragraphs, the reader may 
[Agricultural Report — Vol. ii.] 5 
