Chemistry Of Organic Bodies Vegetables

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1841 edition. Excerpt: ... I ORGANIC CHEMISTRY ArPLIED TO AGRICULTURE AND PHYSIOLOGY. PART FIRST. CHAPTER I. OF THE CHEMICAL PROCESSES IN THE NUTRITION OF VEGETABLES, AND THE CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS OF PLANTS. The object of organic chemistry is to discover the chemical conditions which are essential to the life and perfect development of animals and vegetables, and, generally, to investigate all those processes of organic nature which are due to the operation of chemical laws. The continued existence of all living beings is dependent on the reception by them of certain substances, which are applied to the nutrition of their frame. An inquiry, therefore, into the conditions on which the life and growth of living beings depend, involves the study-- Every vegetable and animal constitutes a machine of greater or less complexity, composed of a variety of parts dependent on each other, and acting all of them to produce a certain end. Vegetables and animals, on this account, are called organized beings; and the chemical history of those compounds which are of animal or vegetable origin, or of organic substances, is called organic chemistry. See Thomson's Chemistry of Organic Bodies, and Webster's Manual of Chemistry, 3d edit., p. 362. of those substances which serve them as nutriment, as well as the investigation of the sources whence these substances are derived, and the changes which they undergo in the process of assimilation. The primary source whence man and animals derive the means of their growth and support is the vegetable kingdom. Plants, on the other hand, find new nutritive material only in inorganic substances. The purport of this work is to elucidate the chemical processes engaged in the nutrition of vegetables. The first part of it will be devoted to the...