VOL. VI. 
Published by Luther Tucker & Son, 
EDITORS AND PROPRIETORS. 
Associate Ed., J. J. THOMAS, Union Springs, N. Y. 
PRICE FIFTY CENTS A YEAR. 
The Cultivator has been published twenty-four years. 
A New Series was commenced in 1853, and the five vo¬ 
lumes for 185 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, can be furnished, bound and post¬ 
paid, at $1.00 each. 
The same publishers issue “The Country Gentleman,’ 
a weekly Agricultural Journal of 16 quarto pages, making 
two vols. yearly of 416 pages, at $2.00 a year. They also 
publish 
The Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs 
—144 pp. 12 mo. — price 25 cents — $2.00 per dozen. This 
work was commenced in 1855, and the nos. for 1855, ’56 
and ’57, have been issued in a beautiful volume, under the 
title of “ Rural Affairs,” —containing 440 engravings of 
Houses, Barns, Out-Houses, Animals, Implements, Fruits 
&c.—price $1.00—sent by mail post-paid. 
Functions of tlie Leaves and Roots of Plants. 
A growing plant gains a new mouth and stomach 
with every additional root and new leaf. The moisture 
of the soil, which forms the sap of the plant, is taken 
into it by the extremities of the roots, or rather by the 
spongioles which terminate the ends of the fibrous 
roots. These possess the power of absorbing and se¬ 
lecting the appropriate food required for each variety 
of plants. At least, we cannot on any other principle, 
so well assign a plausible reason for the many and 
varied phenomena in vegetable life with which we are 
so familiar. As a simple illustration of this, we will 
refer to chemical analysis. 
The straw of wheat requires much silica in its com¬ 
position, amounting in the ash of good wheat straw to 
over 28 per cent., while in the straw or haulm of the 
field bean there is less than per cent, of silica. In 
the ash of the stems and leaves of beans there is 16 ± 
per cent, of potash, while the potash in the ash of 
wheat straw is less than one per cent. Why this dif¬ 
ference of mineral matter in the two plants? We all 
know they can be successfully grown side by side in 
the same field. Each different plant selecting from 
the soil just so much and no more, of the several solu¬ 
ble inorganic substances as are required for the per¬ 
fection and maturity of each particular variety or 
species of plant. All the various phenomena of na¬ 
ture are the results of fixed laws, and no other reason 
can be assigned for their existence, than the will of the 
Creator—He hath so ordained it. 
The fluid taken from the soil by the roots of a plant, 
consists chiefly in water, holding in solution some of 
the gases and minute portions of saline and earthy in- 
No. VI. 
V'V\yVW.'V\ 
gredients, such as potash, soda, lime, silica, &c. These 
soluble substances in the water or sap, as it rises into 
the stem and branches of the plant, for aught we know, 
may be gradually undergoing a series of changes from 
the time it enters the roots till it passes into the leaf. 
In the leaf we know it is to experience various impor¬ 
tant changes or modifications. 
The nearly crude sap in the leaf is subjected to the 
process of exhalation. By carefully conducted experi¬ 
ments, it has been pretty clearly ascertained, that of 
the whole amount of water taken up by the roots of 
plants, about two-thirds of it passes off by exhalation, 
or evaporation by the leaves. The amount of water 
daily evaporated by large leaved plants, like the cab¬ 
bage, pumpkin, grape, and sunflower, especially when 
under the influence of a warm, dry atmosphere, aided 
by the direct rays of the sun, is much greater than 
some persons may be aware of. Hales made an ex¬ 
periment with a sunflower three feet high, inclosed in 
a vessel, which he kept for fifteen days; and inferred 
from it, that the weight of the fluid daily exhaled by 
the plant was twenty ounces. Mr. Everett, in his ad¬ 
dress at Buffalo, stated there had grown “seven mil- 
ions of counted leaves on a single tree.” If Hales’ 
three feet sunflower, with its dozen leaves, exhaled 
twenty ounces of water per diem, how many pounds 
will daily be evaporated by the “seven millions of 
leaves on a single tree?” Can any of our juvenile 
readers figure it out for us ? 
From the foregoing it will be seen that one of the im¬ 
portant functions of the leaves of a plant, is to carry off 
the surplus water—to boil down, as it were, the crude, 
dilute sap, holding in solution the various salts or min¬ 
eral ingredients that make up “ part and parcel” of 
all plants—and thus, by a greater concentration of the 
mineral ingredients held in solution by the sap, they 
3,re more fully prepared to enter into the various chemi¬ 
cal combinations with carbon, and the other organic 
constituents which make up the entire and perfect 
plant in all its varied parts. 
But the leaves of plants, besides their exhaling power, 
have another important function to perform in the 
phenomena of vegetable life. It is through the agency 
of the leaves that most of the woody and other car¬ 
bonaceous structures of plants are derived. Carbon in 
one form or another, is the leading combustible sub¬ 
stance in all fuel generally used—in wood, coal, char¬ 
coal, oil, rosin, pitch, &c. While burning, the carbon 
unites with the oxygen of the atmosphere, resulting in 
carbonic acid—and every cord of wood burned restores 
ALBANY, JUNE, 1858. 
