Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/174

162 the tissue-building process during the night. Thus the plant during the day stores up sun-force sufficient to do its work during the night. It has been suggested by Dr. J. C. Draper, though not proved, or even rendered probable, that the force of tissue-building (force plastique) is always derived from decomposition, or combustion of organic matter. In that case, the force of organic-matter formation is derived from the sun, while the force of tissue-building (which is relatively small) is derived from the combustion of organic matter thus previously formed.

6. —The plastic matters out of which vegetable tissue is built, and which are formed by sunlight in the leaves, are of two kinds, viz., amyloids (dextrine, sugar, starch, cellulose), and albuminoids, or protoplasm. Now, the amyloids are comparatively stable, and do not spontaneously decompose; but the albuminoids not only decompose spontaneously themselves, but drag down the amyloids with which they are associated into concurrent decomposition—not only change themselves, but propagate a change into amyloids. Albuminoids, in various stages and kinds of decomposition, are called ferments. The propagated change in amyloids is called fermentation. By various kinds of ferments, amyloids are thus dragged down step by step to the mineral kingdom, viz., to CO2 and H2O. The accompanying table exhibits the various stages of the descent of starch, and the ferments by which they are effected:

By appropriate means, the process of descent may be stopped on any one of these planes. By far too much is, unfortunately, stopped on the fourth plane. The manufacturer and chemist may determine the downward change through all the planes, and the chemist has recently succeeded in ascending again to No. 4; but the plant ascends and descends the scale at pleasure (avoiding, however, the fourth and fifth), and even passes at one step from the lowest to the highest.

Now, it will be seen by the table that, connected with each of these descensive changes, there is a peculiar ferment associated. Diastase determines the change from starch to dextrine and sugar—saccharification; yeast, the change from sugar to alcohol—fermentation; mother of vinegar, the change from alcohol to acetic acid—acetification; and a peculiar mould, the change from acetic acid to CO2 and water. But