Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Treatise on the Forces Which Produce the Organization of Plants With an Appendix Containing Several Memoirs on Capillary Attraction, Electricity, and the Chemical Action of Light
A seed which has been buried in the ground a few days, makes its appearance above the surface. It soon puts forth its leaves, which turn green in the light, and becomes an active laboratory of all kinds of chemical and mechanical processes. Starch, gum, sugar, and a variety of other substances are formed from inorganic matter, water is drawn up in large quantities from the ground, and evaporated from the leaves.
All these phenomena unquestionably depend on the common laws of physics. Our interest in them is greatly increased by the close resemblance of many of them to things taking place in the case of animal systems. The productions of vegetable life are, many of them, also apparently the productions of animal life. The physical processes which appear in one of the great classes of living beings, appear in the other too. Inquiries into the nature of the vital processes of plants end in resolving problems connected with the physiology of animals.
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