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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    holding high positions in the world of science. Thus Duchartre has objected to the idea of absorption on the ground that it was not in accordance with our knowledge of the functions of leaves, and of the whole course of the nutrition of vegetables, and therefore was not to be seriously entertained. In my previous communication to this Society I pointed out that this argument of his reminded oue of the miserably fallacious arguments against miracles urged by Hume, and stated that in both cases it was a mere petitio principii. All plants are not constituted like the Dioncea, and if it has such a peculiarity in structure, why should it not have a similar one in function ? Beckamp declares that the idea of carnivorous plants is the product of an illusion,—the subversion of the best founded demonstrations of science. You will at once perceive that these latter objections proceed on the assumption that the functions of these leaves are directly opposed to the whole course of nature. But is this the case P In another article which appeared in “ The Garden ” I attempted to show that there are links in creation appearing every here and there, and testifying that in structure and function animals are not everywhere separated from plants by a perfectly impassable barrier, but exhibit a striking unity in the Creator’s plan. What, for instance, can be more clearly vegetable than the chloro- phyll, which is the cause of the lovely and refreshing verdure which is everywhere exhibited by plants? And seeing that this product exercises a special reducing power on the carbonic acid of the atmosphere enabling the plant to fix the carbon and eliminate the oxygen, it seems only fitted to find a place in that kingdom which has been called an “ apparatus of reduction yet it is not altogether alien to the animal world, for allied green granules have been found in the bodies of Hydra viridis, Euglena viridis, &c. And the chief pigment in the bile of herbivorous animals—the biliverdin—has been regarded by Dr Thudi- chum as somewhat analogous to this product of the vege- table world. Again, cellulose, of which the cell-walls of plants are almost, if not entirely, made up, is not exclusively confined to these, but is found also in the mantle of PhaUusia rnammillaris and in that of the Cynthice, Ac.