The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, June 1885, No. 9Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Philosophy
The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, June 1885, No. 9
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Institution -- Periodicals; Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle -- Periodicals
Much of the water is evaporated. A large sunflower was found to exhale
twenty or thirty ounces during the day, but very little at night. After
the sap has been elaborated in the cells, under the influence of air
and light, it descends just under the bark, in the cambium layer, and
furnishes the material for the growth of cells and young buds, and
nourishes all growing parts of the plant. This process takes place
essentially in the earlier part of the season. In late summer and autumn
the circulation in the leaves is impeded by the deposition of mineral
matter, so that the plant or tree becomes gorged with the fluids which
are ready to flow again at the coming of spring. It is this supply which
is drawn upon in the “sugar bush.” A bucketful is often obtained from a
single maple tree in twenty-four hours.
The cambium layer, or mucilaginous material between the bark and wood,
hardens into cellular tissue and forms an annular growth. This is the
case in all exogenous plants. If a section be made of one of them its age
may be easily determined by counting the rings. The other great class
of plants called endogenous, has the growing masses distributed through
the stem. The common cornstalk is an illustration. Few things are more
surprising than the way in which different plants manufacture from the
same elements their
VARIOUS PRODUCTS.
This is noticeable in grafting. I have seen a thorn bush having one
limb loaded with Bartlett pears. Now the material which ascended the
stem was distributed to all the branches, but the cells in some of
them manufactured it into thorn apples, while in this branch it was
transformed into delicious fruit.
[Illustration: SHOWING A CYCAS, A YUCCA, TWO COCOANUT PALM TREES, AN
INDIAN CORN STEM, AND A BANANA.]
No doubt plants have the powers to select various materials. Upon the
same acre of land a hundred different plants may feed and manufacture as
many varieties of products, sweet, bitter, sour, poisonous, nutritious,
fragrant, offensive, green, yellow, red, and so on through the entire
list. As has already been suggested, many vegetable products which are
quite diverse in character, are either identical or quite similar in
chemical composition. Starch, whether obtained from the potato, the
root of the carrot, the kernel of corn, the leaves of the cabbage, or
the cotyledons of the bean, is composed of six atoms of carbon, ten
atoms of hydrogen, and five atoms of oxygen. Sago, tapioca, bread fruit,
arrowroot, and scores of other plant products have the same proportions.
Woody fiber whether from the root, stem or branch, woven into cloth,
built into houses, twisted into rope, made into paper, used as fuel, or
manufactured into furniture, is C₆H₁₀O₅.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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