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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    raunicated to the authorities. No coroner’s inquest is instituted, and hence no post-mortem examination of the body takes place ; but it is known to a select circle of his friends that this liquor was in his body, and that immedi- ately thereafter he was captured. Now, this is one of the liquids most likely to turn acid, and in this case the litmus- paper of the man of science tells the effect but not the cause, for the functions of the plant may be and doubtless are more or less deranged by extraneous applications. So far so well. But does not this facetious gentleman know that a perfectly sober fly—whether in London or else- where, one whose strict teetotalism has guarded him from even tasting this Circean cup—or, that a portion of white of egg will call forth an acid secretion ; and again, I should like to ask our humorous friend whether sour porter, be it from London or Dublin, contains formic acid ? As late as last year in the French Botanical Society, a member, in answer to M. Heckel of Montpelier, threw doubt on the digestive nature of the secretions of these plants by asserting that there was nothing wonderful in an acid liquid, whether a glandular secretion or not, preserv- ing animal matter from putrefaction, inasmuch as we constantly found sound vegetables preserved by being pickled in vinegar. Unfortunately for this member, the simplest experiment might have saved him from committing himself to such an unguarded and erroneous statement. In the paper to which I have referred I made that experi- ment by taking two pieces of meat, one ol which was wrapped carefully round with sphagnum—which yields a thoroughly acid fluid—while the other portion was en- trapped in the leaf of a Dioncea. At the meeting of our Botanical Society both of these pieces of meat had been in their respective places for some time, and when submit- ted to the sense of smell of our distinguished President, Sir Eobert Christison, lie., had no hesitation in declaring that the meat in the sphagnum was far gone in decay, while the other portion had no disagreeable smell what- ever. But the question regarding digestion and absorption has been opposed by abler advocates than these, even by those