Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/531

] there must also be a corresponding exosmose at the roots; and this, which was called root-discharge, Macaire Prinsep thought he had actually discovered, and even Liebig firmly believed in its existence till a recent period, although the researches of Wiegman and Polstorff (1842) and later more careful investigations showed, that there was no noticeable discharge by exosmose to answer to the great quantity of water with substances in solution in it which is taken up by the roots. Again, Dutrochet's theory of endosmose did not fully explain the way in which the several substances which feed the plant find their way into and are disseminated in it. But notwithstanding these and other defects it deserved the greatest consideration, because it gave the first impulse to the further development of the theory of diffusion, and contained a mechanical principle which might serve to explain very various phenomena in vegetation as yet unexplained. Dutrochet hastened to apply it to this purpose, where it was at all possible to do so, and chiefly in his treatise on the ascending and descending sap ('Memoires,' 1837, i. p. 365), which was superior to anything which had been written on the movement of the sap in plants in its clear conception of the question and in perspicuity of treatment. It should be especially mentioned that Dutrochet formed a true estimate of the functions of the leaves as regards both the ascending and descending sap, and to some extent pointed out the fault which lies at the bottom of the .earlier experiments with coloured fluids. After communicating a number of good observations on the paths of the ascending and descending sap, and noticing particularly that in the vine the vessels of the wood serve for the movement of the sap only in spring, when vines bleed, but that they are air-passages in summer, when transpiration causes the most copious flow of water in the wood, he proceeds to consider the forces which effect the movement of the ascending sap in the wood both in spring and summer. He first of all judiciously distinguishes two things which had been before always mixed