126 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
THEORY OF VEGETABLE NUTRITION. 
Gentlemen —The subject of the following: sugges¬ 
tions, is a part of “a Theory of Vegetable Nutrition .,” to 
which I have given some reflection, and upon which, 
through your columns, I would seek elucidation from 
abler hands, if I have misled myself. 
The action of plaster, sulphur, lime, salt, nitre, soda, 
kelp, barilla, sea-water, potash, ashes, charcoal, magne¬ 
sia, metallic oxides, &c., &c., upon the functions of ve¬ 
getable life, I suppose to be essentially medicinal; each 
operating upon the juices and their elaboration, and up¬ 
on the organization and structure of the plant;, with dis¬ 
tinctly similar medicinal influence and results to those 
which the same materials separately or combined would 
effect upon the blood or its circulation, or upon the ali¬ 
mentary principles of animal or human life or functions. 
To arrive at a conclusion as to the truth or falsity of 
this suggestion, let us begin by an exposition of princi¬ 
ples connected with it, as a branch of the theory, es¬ 
tablished by physiological writers, assented to by practi¬ 
cal agriculturists, and which carry out and support ana¬ 
logies between animal and vegetable anatomy, nutri¬ 
ment, functions, and life. 
The juices of the plant, and the blood of the animal, 
are alike the product of animal or vegetable organiza¬ 
tion arid nutriment; and, other things similar, medicinal 
results upon such substances, as ma tter o lvital circula¬ 
tion, should be equaly so. 
The health of the vegetable, its growth, and the quan¬ 
tity and quality of its seed, are as dependent on its jui¬ 
ces, and the purity of them, as the human being or the 
animal, or their health, is, on the juices and blood, and 
their healthy condition. 
The ruddy bloom of the human cheek is no better 
indication of wholesome food and healthy action in 
the system, than is, with the plant, the deep green 
which it exhibits to the experienced eye of the hus¬ 
bandman, who, while in that he predicts the pro¬ 
mise of the coming harvest, as assuredly forecasts a 
failure when a yellow or sickly tinge is discovered in 
the hue of the plant. The aroma of the rose, and the 
velvet aspect of the dahlia in flower, are assured indi¬ 
cations of the quantity and quality of the food with 
which its infancy and maturity have been supplied. 
It is difficult to overcome in a plant, as in an animal, 
the diminutive influences of a want of proper aliment in 
its infancy ; in short “ a consideration of the life, growth 
and propagation of plants, as well as animals, necessari¬ 
ly involves similar topics, such as germination, nutri¬ 
ment, digestion, growth, and development of parts ; 
sexualities, impregnation, and the changes consequent 
upon it; propagation,and dispersion of the species j” and 
as truly as man descended from his first parents and ul¬ 
timately looks to his God for a solution of the mysteries 
of his formation and being—even so has every plant and 
its flower had its original seed, each requiring equally 
the intervention of a Creator to give it birth ; both alike 
giving as incontrovertible evidence of a providential pur¬ 
pose in their vital formation, as does the watch or the 
steamboat, of the hand of man in its mere mechanical 
structure. Although human ingenuity may succeed in 
hybridizing a plant, in that, as in the mule, “ nature ab¬ 
hors the production,” and will assist no farther for its 
continuation. 
Destruction of life gives aliment to vital succession ; 
for as to plants, animals or human beings, as well as 
every living and creeping thing upon the earth, in the 
air, or in the sea, it is alike the doom of nature and its 
round of recreation, that they shall find aliment in no¬ 
thing that has not, like themselves, had a previous vital 
existence. 
But, in considering the plant in connection with the 
human being or animal, let us advert to another branch 
of the same theory, that is, to the prominent dissimilari¬ 
ties which exist between them as living structures. The 
animal is provided with a stomach and organs fitted for 
masticated and digestible food—animal, before decom¬ 
position has taken place, and vegetable, while its fiber 
is yet more or less adhesive. The plant is not similarly 
provided, '*nd consequently can have no poiver over such 
substances. Its organization requires previous digestion 
or decomposition of both, to a point or degree which, as¬ 
sisted by atmospheric moisture, may render them capable 
of solution in water, an! we are to conceive its nutriment 
as entering into the plant, where in the animal the labors 
of digestion have passed, and its food converted into 
chyle is about to enter into the blood of its system. The 
roots of the plant, in taking up its food, can only do so 
by absorption or introsusception, and it has no faculty of 
rejecting even noxious properties, if aqueous, and pre¬ 
sented to its spongioles combined in a liquid state with 
its food. Evidence, however, is here found of instinc¬ 
tive influences, and consequently of sensations in the 
plant. If manure be placed on one side of it, roots from 
the plant will, underground and in the dark, seek and 
appropriate it as naturally as an animal would, in open 
day, go to luxuriant vegetation for its nutriment. 
The plant has no aversion to excreted vegetable or ani¬ 
mal substanceson the contrary, decay above or under¬ 
ground, or a previous animal digestion, are indispensa¬ 
ble to their preparation as its food. While some ani¬ 
mals extract food from the excretion of others, it is 
principally from the undecomposed, or undigested por¬ 
tions of it, and none do so from that of their own spe¬ 
cies. Though plants too, are supposed to benefit, by the 
excreted matter of other plants, they are evidently 
averse to that of their own species. 
These suggestions should naturally lead to the im¬ 
pression, not only that the food—its nutrimentive juices 
—their circulation through the system—and the ope¬ 
rations of medicinal remedies, are in the plant similar 
to the operations of the same remedies in the animal 
system. But (unless the earth has a purifying influ¬ 
ence on the tainted or putrefactive condition of animal 
or vegetable aliment.) the plant has more need of me¬ 
dicinal condiment than the animal, because all the im¬ 
purities attendant upon previous animal digestion would 
otherwise be visited on the juices of the plant. 
Hence I assert, and seek to prove, that while, 
without exception, all vegetable and animal sub¬ 
stances, and every thing of vegetable or animal ori¬ 
gin, or derivation, and. their extracts in a soluble 
state, are, with more or less effect, according to fixed 
principles, (forming another branch of the theory) the 
proper and the only food of the plant,—lime, plaster, sul¬ 
phur, salt, nitre, and soda, are neither its food nor ma¬ 
nure, but that they come in aid of them by their medi¬ 
cinal action on its circulation, juices, and system, dis¬ 
tinctly as the same materials affect the blood or its circu¬ 
lation in a human being or an animal. That some of 
them when taken into the juices contribute to the rigid¬ 
ity and fiber of the plant, and exhibit the product of it 
on analysis in increased quantity, I apprehend to be as 
true as that lime is necessary to the fowl, and contri¬ 
butes to the induration of the shell of its egg; and I 
would be understood as including in the nutrimentive' 
action to the plant of manures, alike all those vegeta¬ 
bles which have a poisonous or injuriously medicinal ef¬ 
fect upon the human system, because I am not yet 
aware that this medicinal property of the plant in any 
degree influences its nutritive action on succeeding ve¬ 
getable products of a different species when decayed 
and applied as a manure. 
Silex and alumina (sand and clay) are incombus¬ 
tible, and therefore incapable of absorption, or the 
appropriation of extraneous substances; their fitness 
and adaptation to vegetable nutriment is only as a 
medium for holding, with more or less aptitude ac¬ 
cording to the various relative compositions or preva¬ 
lences of sand or clay, manures and their condiments 
in solution, and as an element for the plant, as water is 
for the fish, or air for the animal or human being. 
Nor is it necessary that mere earth should, as to the 
plant, perform any other office, unless it be as to rnois- 
ure as hereafter stated. 
Look with a magnifying glass at the sand of the sea 
shore—the interstices between its angular granulations, 
as visible as in a stone heap, show that liquid manure 
would drop through them as through a sieve. Look 
again at clay, through the same medium, and the 
strongest glass that can be found, will not enable the 
observer to separate visibly one particle from another: 
agitate a soil composed of both, actively in a tumbler of 
water, and the sand on cessation will be immediately 
precipitated by its comparative gravity, while the mi¬ 
nute particles of clay will remain suspended for a long 
time in the liquid, Sand or clay, in the prevalence with 
either of 90 per cent, is sterile ; because, with the sand, 
neither can the small roots of the plant Isold in it, nor 
will it hold manure in solution long enough to enable 
the roots of the plant to imbibe or take it up; nor, in 
the same proportion with clay, can either the roots of 
the plant perforate between its compact and adhesive 
particles, or the liquid aliment with ease enter into it, 
or if in it, be easily extracted by the roots of the plant; 
yet in the relative proportions of 40 of sand to fiO of clay 
asa mixture,we find the best constituted soils. Because, 
while the sand prevents the adhesion of the particles of 
clay to its glassy granulations, and consequently makes it 
friable and loamy, the clay fills up the angular intersti¬ 
ces of the sand, easing the perforation of the roots, and 
carefully holding as a cup-bearer or hand-maiden to 
tl e plant, manure in solution as its food, till its roots 
can absorb and take it up. 
We see, therefore, that a stomach, or its digestive 
functions, are useless to the plant; and that the earth 
to it is but an element in which it may exist there, as 
we do in the air, till both of us get our aliment “ aliun¬ 
de.” 
Still, as to moisture, sand and clay perform an indis¬ 
pensable office to the plant, independent of the fall-of 
rains, and of their medium for the alternate influences 
of air, moisture and heat upon vegetable decomposi¬ 
tion. 
Wet either sand or clay, or both—weigh them—ex¬ 
pose them to strong solar heat—weigh them again—it 
will be found that much of its moisture has been eva¬ 
porated by the sun. Throw them into a crucible, over 
a strong fire, and when heated, weigh them again—the 
farther reduction of weight will show that more moist¬ 
ure than solar heat could throw off has been evaporate i. 
Take the heated earth from the crucible, arid put it in 
the hotest sun, and it will he perceived on weighing it 
again, that it spontaneously regains from the atmos¬ 
phere the moisture the crucible had driven from it. 
This would seem to show a positive attraction or affini¬ 
ty in earths for moisture. 
“ The solid weight and measure of dry dust is neces¬ 
sarily less than the same material wet. The solar 
noonday’s summer heat, and the midnight dew should, 
in so far as mere moisture is concerned, naturally pro¬ 
duce that pressure of the particles of the earth by 
night, which w r ould become relieved at noon by the eva¬ 
poration of the midday’s sun. 
When we consider the minute and tender roots of the 
growing plant, and its meanderings through the earthy 
particles of sand and clay, seeking in the interstices, 
alike its alimentary nutriment, and its medicinal condi¬ 
ments, may we not suppose the swelling roots to be 
aided by these alternate changes of night and day, and 
that this tendency is promoted more or less directly 
with reference to the diurnal production and dissipation 
of moisture, and to the friability of the soil and its tex¬ 
ture, and thus account lor the continuous aliment from 
manures to the plant, even in a time of severe drouth, 
and when rains have not fallen to assist the solution. 
But let us again consider the unctuous properties of 
manure, when moistened by the earth, and its compara¬ 
tive induration when out of the earth, and exposed to 
the sun. We here perceive the necessity and the office 
of that spontaneous affinity for moisture, which the 
earth exhibits under all conuitions of solar heat—more 
especially underground, where the passage of the ten¬ 
der fibers and the roots of the plant are finding their 
aliment, and their way in quest of it. We see them 
flourish often in a drouth, and decline only in times of its 
utmost severity, and when the earthy affinities for moist¬ 
ure can no longer sufficiently protect them, even below 
the surface, from its effects. 
But here again nature has, as I apprehend, enlisted 
nitre in aid of vegetation. That nitre and its tendency 
to moisture assist, we know—and “ no phenomenon 
has excited the attention of chemical philosophers more 
than the continual spontaneous reproduction of nitre 
in certain places, alter it has been extracted from 
them.” In the proportion of 1 to 300 nitre is benefi¬ 
cial to vegetation, but in a greater degree it is unsafe 
and deleterious. “It is formed spontaneously in all sit¬ 
uations where decaying vegetable or animal matters are 
decomposed, with access to air, and proper substances 
with which it may combine, such as soda, lime, alumina, 
magnesia and alkalies. Ground frequently trodden by 
cattle, and impregnated with their excrements, or the 
walls of inhabited places, or where putrid animal va¬ 
pors abound, such as slaughter-houses, drains, or tlie 
like, afford nitre by exposure to the air.” And I ap¬ 
prehend the formation of it in the earth, (the ordinary 
manuring substances contributing,) is promoted by 
merely stirring it with the plow, tire harrow or the cul¬ 
tivator. 
This or salt is as congenial and necessary to the 
vegetable as to the animal creation, and sustenance ; 
and may it not be questionable, too, whether the saline 
exhalations of the mighty deep, abounding throughout 
the world, are not as equaly indispensable to the gene¬ 
ral purposes of nature, and of nature’s God, in that 
never-ceasing supply, and spontaneous formation of ni¬ 
tre in the earth, I have alluded to. 
But we see, while a little salt is beneficial to vegeta¬ 
tion, used in excess, it, as well as nitre, destroys living 
vegetables;—in other words, it affects deleleilously or 
medicinally, the juices of the plant precisely as it would 
the healthy stale of the Llood or juices of the animal, or 
the cutaneous functions of either plant or animal. That 
a certain excess may be excreted, see the white efflo¬ 
rescence on salt hay, or sedge, in places where marine 
moisture is in excess, of.en exhibited on the outer sides 
of the leaf. 
The medical action of soda, kelp and the barilla of 
sea-weeds, in their tendency to correct acidity in soils 
and their vegetable products, I recently hinted at on a 
former occasion, in your paper.* 
So, also, as to the medicinal influence of lime upon 
sorrel. Lime destroys sorrel, because acid extract from 
the manure for its juice, is the essential need and qua¬ 
lity of that plant; and lime in the vegetable as in tl.e 
human system, corrects acidity, which comes into a soil 
as a sufficiency of healthy vegetable or animal nutri¬ 
ment and consequent fertility depart from it. 
And is it not likewise true, that as the human system 
fails to correct acidity in the secretion of its food, im¬ 
perfect digestion, unhealthy juices, sickly offspring, (if 
any,) disease and death, are the consequence ? Acidity 
in the digestive process is necessarily a precursor; 
the danger is in the tendency to excess. Acids are che¬ 
mical digestive assistants—alkaline earths and the salts 
operate as the correctors of those acids. 
An animal is best fatted on acidulated slops, because 
the gastric juices, which a previous meal prepares for 
its successor, being met by food already acidulated, are 
the less requisite, from being thrown into the stomach 
of the animal in that state, and in so far fitted for di¬ 
gestion—and what otherwise would be required to pro¬ 
mote digestion,' goes to enrich the juices of the sys 
tem. The danger only is in the excessive acid, and its 
tendency or progress to a putrid fermentation, in which 
state, as a food, it is poisonous. 
The more caustic lime is, if applied to earth or soil 
in compost, or to the raw surface, the more effectual to 
correct or destroy the acid. But its action on the shin 
of a living plant, or the coats of the human stomach, 
would, unless diluted from that caustic state, be destruc¬ 
tive. 
Sulphur is beneficial to plants in due quantity, and 
forms, generally speaking, in plaster, about sixty per 
cent cf its compound, as a sulphate of lime. The ac¬ 
tion of plaster is medicinal to the plant, as sulphur 
would be to the human being or animal. 
Thus, a little sulphur given to a 1 orned animal, will, 
circulating through the blood, purify it, and secreted 
through the pores of the skin, will throw off enough to 
drive vermin from him. So, if a hole le bored in a tree, 
and filled with sulphur, it will, when dissolved or tak< n 
up by the moisture of the sap, be circulated through tl e 
tree, and while improving its health, and the hue of its 
Vol. vi. page 18. 
