December 17,1870.] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
4S7 
'water—are laid under contribution by plants. They ab¬ 
sorb and utilize matter in all states and conditions,—solid, 
liquid, gaseous, visible and invisible, clean or foul, come 
•equally welcome to plants. We hear of great things 
being done by the use of waste. Old and apparently 
iuseless matters are torn up and fined down, and new 
products spring forth as if by magic. Fortunes have 
been built up out of shoddy. Plants are likewise dis¬ 
tinguished in this line. Theirs is the largest shoddy 
factory in the world. They are Nature’s universal sca¬ 
vengers, always sweeping up, utilizing, transforming, 
glorifying, dirt, shoddy, waste, and converting it into 
products of the highest value. Nothing escapes the 
•keen, eager search of plants. They question the winds 
in their hurried courses, and case them of their loads. 
They invite the dew to adorn them with its necklace of 
pearls, that they may drink in its nourishing sweetness. 
‘They tenderly, firmly hug all kinds of earth, that they 
may take all they need for themselves out of it. They 
run up into, and wave themselves about in the air, that 
they may feed upon its carbon and ammonia. In one 
word, their field for the supply of raw material is the 
world; and having done their best to empty it, they 
turn their pleading flowers and inviting leaves towards 
the sun, and proceed to do their utmost to absorb all 
its heat, ’to use up its light, to exhaust its chemical 
forces, and empty it of its energia, or life-giving powers. 
Such is the baldest possible outline of some of the chief 
sources from which plants draw their supplies of raw 
material. 
No sooner are their factories furnished with these than 
forthwith they hasten to convert them into finished pro¬ 
ducts. But to this end motive power is needed. Rest 
Is the grave of production, motion its life. Plants foxm 
no exception to the general laws. They can manufac¬ 
ture nothing without moving force, and that force is 
never absent unless it is bound in the iron fetters of 
frost, or arrested by the colder grasp of death. True we 
cannot hear the rush of the sap ; the heat that quickens 
■falls softly on leaf and flower. Chemical compositions 
or decompositions which arc incessantly proceeding in 
plant factories give forth no sound. The lightning- 
plays among leaves and flowers without scorching spot 
or hissing noise. The energia of the sun stimulates the 
life of the plant to the utmost, though the summons to 
awake is unheard by mortal ear. But is there, there¬ 
fore, no motion F Nay, are not all the greatest move¬ 
ments in Nature silent F We hear not the stars in their 
flurried courses. The daily revolution of the globe gives 
forth no crashing intonation. 
The motive powers used in plant factories are various, 
—heat, light, chemical affinity, and life are probably the 
chief. It is impossible to dwell upon either of them. 
Life and heat are perhaps the most important, and be¬ 
tween them they do an amount of work that is perfectly 
astounding. We know little of either; possibly they 
are closely related, almost synonymous. The sun in a 
secondary sense may be said to be the source of both, 
but they work everywhere to produce motion. Be¬ 
tween them they set and keep all the fluids of plants in 
perpetual movement, and these fluids are the carriers of 
nearly all that is needed to build up structure and 
manufacture produce. Independently of the force ex¬ 
pended on production, plants perform other and highly 
important work. They pump a great proportion of the 
water of the world, and thus enrich and fructify by 
watering the earth. The sun is the greatest, strongest 
raiser of water. But the sun and the atmosphere draw 
their supplies chiefly from the surface of the earth, 
rivers and oceans. The roots of trees go deeper down 
for their water, and the leaves distribute this water at a 
high elevation. What the force of steam is to your fac¬ 
tories, these and other forces are to plant manufactories. 
They pervade, move, quicken, drive the entire machi¬ 
nery of production. Every part of the plant is set to 
work in extending, spinning, weaving, transforming, 
finishing something. The designs are most perfect, the 
products more varied than can be enumerated or ima¬ 
gined. Do you ask what plants make ? Rather inquire 
what they do not make. They make fruit, flowers, corn, 
wine, oil, gum, resin, pitch, timber, cotton, flax, fibre, 
tea, coffee, starch, rice, spices, acids, perfumes, and me¬ 
dicines. They have mainly formed the tilth of oin¬ 
fields,—they constitute our coal measures. And all these 
things are made out of the most unlikely elementary 
materials. 
Consider the lilies, the roses, the violets in their sweet¬ 
ness ; the orchids in their gorgeous colouring and mar¬ 
vellous beauty of structure, perfect mimics of some of 
the most exquisitely and elaborately formed insects. Look 
at the oak-tree in its strength, and the tiniest moss in 
its shrinking weakness-; then remember that a few mor¬ 
sels of solid matter, a few drops of water, some fleeting 
sunbeams with invisible food searched out of the air, 
have formed them all. These are brought in to those 
marvellous manufactories, plants, and forthwith duly 
delivered is all this beauty, sweetness and glory. The 
transforming powers of plants ai-e beyond comprehen¬ 
sion. For what skill of man could compound such a 
varied bouquet of sweet odoux-s from such crude elemen- 
tary matters as these P 
Do you ask if over-production is ever known in these 
plant factories F Well, sometimes, though it is not the 
evil that it is among us. For their very act of} reduction 
is almost as serviceable to us as the products manufac¬ 
tured. Incidentally, as it were, the mere working of 
plants fills our x-ivers and purifies our air. Then there 
is no waste in Natui-e: “ Gather up the fragments that 
remain, that nothing be lost,” is her constant practice. 
What is not needed to-day will be wanted to-moiTOw. 
There is a case in point. Ages ago the world seemed in 
danger of being engulfed beneath the debris of plants. 
The strongest forms of plant life, stimulated by a hot 
steaming atmosphere, nished up as if by magic. They 
decayed almost as rapidly. Decomposition added fuel 
to the energy of growth. The living fed upon the dead. 
A great contest raged throughout many ages between 
life and death. Pi'oduction and destruction, growth and 
decay, ran a neck-and-neck race for the mastery of the 
world, and production won the race. The eai'th groaned 
beneath its huge load of caiboniferous debris. At last 
its back bent and broke with the sheer weight, possibly; 
then there came a subsidence or overflow—a hotpress 
of fresh strata rolled over—and the coal measures were 
formed. And now, at the present moment, we are warm¬ 
ed by the heat, lighted by the light, and derive most of 
our wox-king force from the energy of primeval suns. 
Had we seen all this, wo should have cried out what a 
shameful loss! but a greater than man said “ Gather up 
the -fragments ” for the homes, the factoi-ies, the rail¬ 
ways, the steamships of my great family in the nine¬ 
teenth century, and all succeeding ages. And thus it 
came to pass that we filled our coal cellai's with the car¬ 
bon of the old woi'ld. 
{To be continued.) 
Colonial Tobacco. —The success which has attended 
the inti'oduction of tobacco cultivation into some of our 
colonies will give fresh encouragement to those who are 
working in this department of economic botany. We 
learn from Nature that samples of Latakia tobacco grown 
in Jamaica have been submitted for approval in London 
and reported upon favourably, while in India the seeds 
of the best vai-ieties ai-e being distributed in the disti’icts 
most suited to the cultivation of the plants. Fi-om Natal 
a sample has just been l'eceived, which, in the opinion of 
an eminent firm of tobacco-brokers in the City, is a very 
near appi-oach to what colonial tobacco should be. It is 
of good substance and of a fair light brown colour. It 
carefully packed, it would pi-obably fetch the price of 
5d. to b\d. per lb. in bond, and meet a ready sale in the 
London market. 
