Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Volume 151; Giving Some Accounts of the Present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours, of the Ingenious, in Many Considerable Parts of the World (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1862 Excerpt: ...pass in the opposite direction to be decomposed in the sunlight of the outer cells. As the process of cell-formation went forward, and the once outer cells became buried deeper by the still more recent ones above them, they would gradually pass from the state in which the sunlight was the greater reducing-agent, to that in which the carbon-matter of the cell became the greater--from the state in which there was a flow of carbonic acid to them and of oxygen from them, to that in which the reverse action took place. The effect of this action may be the formation of oxidized products--acids, or saccharine matter, &c.--in the deeper cells, whilst the great reducing-power of the sun's rays may form more highly carbonized substances in the outer cells, which in their turn become subject to oxidation when buried deeper. The physical and physiological phenomena of such interchanges are obviously worthy of a closer study; but the subject is too wide for any further development here. 6. The very great reducing-power operating in those parts of the plant where ozone is most likely, if at all, to be evolved, seems unfavourable to the idea of the oxidation of Nitrogen into nitric acid by its means--that is to say, under circumstances where the much more readily oxidizable substance, carbon, is not oxidized, but on the contrary its oxide, carbonic acid, is reduced; whilst, as has been seen, when beyond the influence of the direct rays of the sun, the cells seem to supply an abundance of the more easily oxidized carbon, in a condition of combination readily available for oxidation by free oxygen, or ozone, should it be present. The conclusion that free Nitrogen would not be likely to be oxidated into nitric acid within the structures of the plant, seems to be borne ou...