Opening address to the Botanical Society of Edinburgh delivered in November 1878 : being a sketch of the present state of our knowledge regarding the digestion, absorption, and assimilation of animal food by Dionaea muscipula / by Thomas A.G. Balfour.

Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Opening address to the Botanical Society of Edinburgh delivered in November 1878 : being a sketch of the present state of our knowledge regarding the digestion, absorption, and assimilation of animal food by Dionaea muscipula / by Thomas A.G. Balfour. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    as we have already seen, he found in his fed plants. We must, however, never forget that chlorophyll is not essential to the production of starch (if not also of other carbo-hydrates), as the experiments of Van Tieghem have shown. But let us now look at some of F. Darwins tables, and we shall be forced to the conclusion that real nutrition of the plant, and especially of some portions of it, is effected by the absorption by the leaves of organic matter. Table 3 gives the number of flower-stems on each side in the six plates on August 7, and the proportion is seen to be, for unfed to fed, as 100:149‘1. Table 5 again exhibits the number of healthy leaves (as shown by their having secretion on their glands) on each side of three of the six plates, and here the proportion of unfed to fed is as 100 :136 9. Experiment about middle of August. From Table 6, among other things, we learn that the total weight of unfed and fed plants (without flower-stems) dried at from 80° to 90° C. was in the proportion 100:121 -5. In Table 7, among other items, the total number of stems (including those bearing flowers as well as those bearing capsules) from all the plates gave the proportion of unfed to fed as 100 :164'9 ; and the weight of these was as 100:23D9; the average weight per stem being as 100:141-3. In Table 8 we have the total number of capsules, which gives the proportion of 100 unfed to 194-4 fed ; average number of capsules for each stem, 100 :1216 ; total weight of capsules unfed to fed, as 100:130 ; total number of seeds in capsules, as 100:122-7; average number of seeds per capsule, as 100 : 122-7, same as above. Table 9 furnishes us with the average weight of each seed, which was in proportion of 100:157'36; total number of seeds from all the plants in all the plates gave the propor- tion of 100: 241-5 ; total weight of seeds from all the plants in all the plates was in proportion of 100 : 379’7. It is very striking that the greatest disparity in the pro- portions is in the instance last cited ; on this Mr F. Darwin remarks, that “ the special advantage which nitrogenous food, given to the leaves, yields is the power of producing