If iron is absent from the nutritive medium the plant will wither. If we sprout seeds in a solution from which this metal has been carefully excluded, the development will follow its regular course as long as the plant is in the condition properly called that of germination, or while it does not have to draw anything from the soil. The stem rises and the first leaves are formed as usual. But all these parts will continue pale, and the green matter, the granulation of chlorophyll, will not appear. Now, if we add a small quantity of salt of iron to the ground in which the roots are planted, or a much-diluted solution is sprinkled on the leaves and the stem, the chlorotic plant will recover its health and take on its normal coloration. Experiments of this sort make well manifest that iron is necessary to green plants, and they show, besides, the bearing of its action, and that what is most special and most characteristic in the phenomena of vegetable life may be traced exactly to the organization of that green matter. It was long thought that if iron was necessary for the formation of chlorophyll, it was because it had a part in its constitution. We know now that this is not so. The metal does nothing but accompany the chlorophyll in the granulation in which it is found. The influence which iron exerts in the development of the lower plants, like the muscidenes, was illustrated with great precision in a study made about thirty years ago by M. Raulin, who experimented with the common mold (_Aspergillus niger_), to determine the coefficient of importance of all the elements that have a part in its vegetation. When the iron was removed from a medium that had been shown capable of giving a maximum crop of that mold, the plants languished, and the return fell off immediately to one third. Estimating the quantity of metal that produces this effect, it was found that the addition of one part of iron was sufficient to determine the production of a weight of plant nearly nine hundred times as great. The suppression of the iron further caused an irreparable loss, for when it was sought to remedy the wilting of the plants by restoring the iron which had been taken from the medium--an experiment which had been successful with higher plants--the attempt was a failure, and the plants could not be prevented from perishing. These facts are full of interest in themselves, and they further show well the necessity or utility of iron in plant life, but they teach us no more. They reveal nothing of the mechanism of the action, and if we wish to penetrate further in the matter we always have to turn to animal physiology.--_Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue des Deux Mondes._ THE MALAY LANGUAGE. BY R. CLYDE FORD, PROFESSOR OF GERMAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, ALBION COLLEGE.