_Earthy constituents_, those which are left in the form of ashes when a leaf or a stick of wood is burned in the open air. These consist of some _potash_ (or _soda_ in a marine plant), some _silex_ (the same as flint), and a little _lime_, _alumine_, or _magnesia_, _iron_ or _manganese_, _sulphur_, _phosphorus_, etc.,--some or all of these in variable and usually minute proportions. They are such materials as happen to be dissolved, in small quantity, in the water taken up by the roots; and when that is consumed by the plant, or flies off pure (as it largely does) by exhalation, the earthy matter is left behind in the cells,--just as it is left incrusting the sides of a teakettle in which much hard water has been boiled. Naturally, therefore, there is more earthy matter (i. e. more ashes) in the leaves than in any other part (sometimes as much as seven per cent, when the wood contains only two per cent); because it is through the leaves that most of the water escapes from the plant. Some of this earthy matter incrusts the cell-walls, some goes to form crystals or rhaphides, which abound in many plants (422), some enters into certain special vegetable products, and some appears to be necessary to the well-being of the higher orders of plants, although forming no necessary part of the proper vegetable structure. _The essential constituents_ of the organic fabric are those which are dissipated into air and vapor in complete burning. They make up from 88 to 99 per cent of the leaf or stem, and essentially the whole both of the cellulose of the walls and the protoplasm of the contents. Burning gives these materials of the plant's structure back to the air, mainly in the same condition in which the plant took them, the same condition which is reached more slowly in natural decay. The chemical elements of the cell-walls (or cellulose, 402), as also of starch, sugar, and all that class of organizable cell-material, are carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen (399). The same, with nitrogen, are the constituents of protoplasm, or the truly vital part of vegetation. 449. These chemical elements out of which organic matters are composed are supplied to the plant by water, carbonic acid, and some combinations of nitrogen. _Water_, far more largely than anything else, is imbibed by the roots; also more or less by the foliage in the form of vapor. Water consists of oxygen and hydrogen; and cellulose or plant-wall, starch, sugar, etc., however different in their qualities, agree in containing these two elements in the same relative proportions as in water.