Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/551

.] 1860 that new paths were struck out on these subjects, and important results achieved. More important at the time for the advance of the science was the further examination of the question respecting the source of the nitrogen which plants assimilate; it was the more necessary that this point should be finally settled, because Liebig's deductions still gave room for many doubts, and the first of vegetable physiologists, de Saussure, in his later days made the mistake of coming forward in opposition to Liebig as a defender of the humus-theory, maintaining (1842) that ammonia or the nitrates are not themselves the food-material of plants, but only serve to dissolve the humus. Others also found it difficult to give up entirely the old and favourite doctrine of the humus; though von Mohl and others acknowledged that the carbon of plants is mainly derived from the atmosphere, yet they thought themselves obliged to assign to the humus, on account of the nitrogen which it contains, a very important share in promoting vegetation. Under these circumstances it was extremely fortunate for physiology that {{sc|Boussingault} took up the question. He had occupied himself before the appearance of Liebig's book with experimental and analytical investigations into germination and vegetation, and specially into the source of nitrogen in plants. His experiments in vegetation in 1837 and 1838 produced no very decisive results; but he continued them for some time longer, improving his methods of observation from year to year; and between the years 1851 and 1855 he succeeded in establishing with all certainty as the result of many repeated trials, that plants are not capable of assimilating the free nitrogen of the atmosphere, but that a normal and vigorous vegetation is produced, when they are supplied with nitrogen from the nitrates in the soil. It appeared also that plants will flourish in a soil from which all trace of organic substance has been removed by heat, if a nitrate is added to the constituents of the ash; this proves at the same time that the whole of the carbon in such plants is derived from the