“If we look at the great groups of plants from a broad point of view, it is remarkable that the fungi and the phanerogams occupy attention on quite other grounds than do the algæ, mosses, and ferns. Algæ are especially a physiologist’s group, employed in questions on nutrition, reproduction, and cell division and growth; the Bryophyta and Pteridophyta are, on the other hand, the domain of the morphologist. Fungi and Phanerogams, while equally or even more employed by specialists in morphology and physiology, appeal widely to general interest on the ground of utility.
“It is very significant that a group like the fungi should have attracted so much scientific attention, and aroused so general an interest at the same time. But the fact that fungi affect our lives directly has been driven home; and whether as poisons or foods, destructive moulds or fermentation agents, parasitic mildews or disease germs, they occupy more interest than all other cryptogams put together, the flowering plants alone rivalling them in this respect. A marked feature of the period in which we live will be the great advances made in our knowledge of the uses of plants, for, of course, this development of economic botany has gone hand in hand with the progress of geological botany, the extension of our planting, and the useful applications of botany to the processes of home industries.”[49]
The intimate organic structure of the vegetable world is seen to consist of a variety of different materials indeterminable by unassisted vision, and for the most part requiring high magnification for their discrimination. Chemical analysis had, however, shown that vegetables are composed of a few simple substances, water, carbonic acid gas, oxygen, nitric acid, and a small portion of inorganic salts. Out of these simple elements the whole of the immense variety of substances produced by the vegetable kingdom are constructed. No part of the plant contains fewer than three of these universally distributed elements, hence the greater uniformity in their chemical constituents. It will be seen, then, that the methods of plant chemistry are of supreme interest both to the chemist and the physiologist, or biologist. Plants, while they borrow materials from the inorganic, and powers from the physical world, whereby they are enabled to pass through the several stages of germination, growth, and reproduction, could not accomplish these transformations without the all-important aid of light and heat, the combined functions of which are indispensable to the perfect development of the vegetable world.
Light, then, enables plants to decompose, change into living matter, and consolidate, the inorganic elements of carbonic acid gas, water, and ammonia, which are absorbed by the leaves and roots from the atmosphere and earth; the quantity of carbon consolidated being exactly in proportion to the intensity of the light. Nevertheless, light in its chemical character is a deoxidising agent, by which the numerous neutral compounds common to vegetables are formed. It is the principal agent in preparing the food of plants, and it is during the chemical changes spoken of that the specific heat of plants is slowly evolved, which, though generally feeble, is sometimes very sensibly evolved, especially so when flowers and fruits are forming, on account of the increase of chemical energy at this period.
The action of heat is measurable throughout the whole course of vegetable life, although its manifestations take on various forms—those suited to the period and circumstances of growth. Upon the heat generated depends the formation of protein and nitrogenous substances, which abound more directly in the seed buds, the points of the roots, and in all those organs of plants which are in the greatest state of activity. The whole chemistry of plant life, in fact, is manifest in this production of energy for drawing material from its surroundings; therefore the organising power of plants bears a direct ratio to the amount of light and heat acting upon them.
The living medium, then, which possesses the marvellous property of being primarily aroused into life and energy, and which either forms the whole or the greater portion of every plant, is in its earliest and simplest form nothing more than a microscopic cell, consisting of one or two colourless particles of matter, in closest contact, and wholly immersed in a transparent substance somewhat resembling albumen (white of egg), termed protoplasm, but differing essentially in its character and properties. This nearly colourless organisable matter is the life-blood of the cell. It is sufficiently viscid to maintain its globular form, and under high powers is seen to have a slightly consolidated film enclosing semi-transparent particles, together with vacuoles which are of a highly refractive nature. These small bodies are termed nuclei, and they appear to be furnished with an extremely delicate enveloping film. In a short time the nuclei increase in number and split up the parent body. The protoplasmic mass, however, is undoubtedly the true formative material, and is rightly regarded as “the physical basis of life” of both the vegetable and animal kingdoms.
There are, however, certain members of the vegetable kingdom which somewhat resemble animals in their dependence upon receiving organic compounds already formed for them, being themselves unable to effect the fixation of the carbon needed to effect the first stage in their after chemical transformations. Such is the case with a large class of flowering plants, among Phanerogams, and the leafless parasites which draw their support chiefly from the tissues of their hosts. It is likewise the case with regard to the whole group of fungi; the lower cryptogams, which derive the greater portion of their nutritive materials from organic matter undergoing some form of histolysis; while others belonging to this group have the power of originating decomposition by a fermentative (zymotic) action peculiarly their own. There are many other protophytes which live by absorption, and which appear to take in no solid matter, but draw nourishment from the atmosphere or the water in which they exist.
With regard to motion, this was at one time considered the distinctive attribute of animal life, but many protophytes possess a spontaneity of power and motion, while others are furnished with curious motile organs termed cilia, or whip-like appendages, flagella, by which their bodies are propelled with considerable force through the water in which they live.
Henceforth this protoplasmic substance was destined to take an important position in the physiological world. It is, then, desirable to enter somewhat more fully into the life history of so remarkable a body. It has a limiting membrane, composed of a substance somewhat allied to starch, termed cellulose, one of the group of compounds known as carbo-hydrates. The mode of formation and growth of this cell wall is not yet definitely determined; nevertheless, it is the universal framework or skeleton of the vegetable world, although it appears to play no special part in their vital functions. It merely serves the purpose of a protecting membrane to the globular body called the “primordial cell,” which permanently constitutes the living principle upon which the whole fundamental phenomena of growth and reproduction depend.
Sometimes this protoplasmic material is seen to constitute the whole plant; and so with regard to the simplest known forms of animal life—the amœba, for example. That so simple and minute an organism should be capable of independent motion is indeed surprising. Dujardin, a French physiologist, termed this animated matter sarcode. On a closer study of the numerous forms of animal life it was found that all were alike composed of this sarcode substance, some apparently not having a cell wall. The same seemed to hold good of certain higher forms of cells, the colourless blood corpuscles for instance, which under high powers of the microscope are seen to change their shape, moving about by the streaming out of this sarcode. At length the truth dawned on histologists that the cell contents, rather than the closing wall, must be the essential structure. On further investigation it became apparent that a far closer similarity existed between vegetables and animals than was before supposed. Ultimately it was made clear that the vegetable protoplasm and the animal sarcode were one and the same structure. Max Schultz found this to be the case, and to all intents and purposes they are identical.