The absence of heat with plenty of light is shown in the vegetation of
mountainous districts, where there is great size, but the absence of
leafy expansion, as in the pine tribe (fig. 5). Where both light and
heat are deficient, nothing but fungi, mosses, and lichens of the most
stunted nature will grow. Experiments in hothouses prove that although
tropical plants be supplied with their proper amount of heat, yet
without the very greatest supply of light that can be obtained, they do
not come to any degree of perfection. The influence of light is chiefly
upon the leaves, that of heat upon the earth and root, which becomes
more fully developed. When a seed is placed in the earth, moisture is
absorbed by it from the earth, and a development of the cells of the
cellular tissue of which the seed is composed takes place, and from
the peculiar nature of these cells they divide into two sets, one of
which passes upwards towards the light, the other passes downwards
into the earth; these last (which pass downwards) form a fibre called
the "radicle" (fig. 6), those which pass upwards form also a stalk or
fibre called the "plumule," which carries up with it a part of the
seed called the "cotyledon," which (like a leaf) has the power of
decomposing the carbonic acid of the air and fixing its carbon in the
form of wood. This begins as soon as the cotyledon has reached the
light, and thus the formation of fibres of woody matter takes place,
which fibres descend from the cotyledon to the radicle. Meanwhile the
formation of other cells of the plumule takes place, until the first
leaf is formed, when other fibres of wood are sent down, and so on
for every leaf, so that the number of woody fibres which form the
trunk of a tree is in proportion to the number of leaves which that
tree has borne, from which we come to the conclusion that the size of
the trunk of a tree is the sum of all its branches. While all this is
going on, the cellular tissue of the downward part or radicle also
becomes developed and divides out into roots, on the surface and at the
extremities of which are minute cellular bodies called "spongioles"
(from their power of absorbing moisture), which take up the fluid of
the earth which surrounds them; this moisture ascends through the
vessels of the plant till it arrives at the surface of the leaves,
where it is exposed to the action of light and sunshine. The ascent of
the moisture of the earth was first correctly explained by Du Trochet,
and is owing to a peculiar power which he discovered, and which is
called "Endosmose;" this consists in the tendency which a fluid has to
penetrate a membrane on the other side of which is a fluid of greater
density than itself. This may be seen by the following experiment:
obtain a piece of glass tubing about a foot long, having the end blown
out into the form of a bell, as in fig. 7, tie a piece of bladder over
the expanded end and fill it partly with syrup or gum-water, so that
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