Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from On the Sources of the Nitrogen of Vegetation: With Special Reference to the Question Whether Plants Assimilate Free or Uncombined Nitrogen
The facts at the present time generally accepted regarding the ultimate composition, and the sources of the constituents, of plants, have, for the most part, received their preponderating weight of proof within the limits of the present century. But it is to the century preceding it that we must look for the establishment of much that was essential as the foundation of those advances which have since been made.
Whatever may be the value at present attached to the particular views of hales regarding the composition and the sources of vegetable matter, we must accord to his labours, in the early part of the eighteenth century, the merit of having been guided by a proper spirit of experimental inquiry. Nor did he fail in applying to good account, and even in extending, the then existing knowledge of the material things around him which were apparently involved in the mysterious processes of vegetable growth.
With our present knowledge, however, of the general composition of plants, and of the sources of their constituents, it is easy to see how essential was a proper under standing of the chemistry of the air, and of water, to any true conceptions of the mate rial changes involved in the vegetative process. It can, indeed, hardly excite surprise, that what may be called the germs of our present knowledge of the chemistry of plant growth came forth almost simultaneously with the now adopted views of the compo sitiou of those universal, though not exclusive, media of vegetation - air, and water.
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