red inside. It was a natural conclusion at that time, that it was these parts which chiefly absorbed the red colouring matter, and in fact this opinion was maintained till quite recent times, and it was on such results that Pyrame de Candolle founded his theory of the spongioles of the root, which is still accepted in France. At present it is known, that the bark and especially the youngest tips of the fibres of the root are not coloured under these circumstances, until they have been first poisoned and killed by the colouring matter; these experiments therefore, which have been frequently repeated since De la Baisse's time, prove nothing respecting the action of living roots, but they were from the first the cause of a pernicious error in vegetable physiology, which as we shall see gave rise to others also. One result however of De la Baisse's experiments was less misleading; he placed the cut ends of branches of woody plants in the coloured fluid, and found that not only the general body of the wood, but the woody bundles which pass from it into the leaves and parts of the flowers, were coloured red, while the succulent tissue of the bark and leaves remained uncoloured. It appeared therefore that the red juice passed only through the wood, and a somewhat bold analogy might lead to the further conclusion that this is true also of the nutrient substances dissolved in the watery sap; but the view so stated is not at present considered to be correct, and that the sap which ascends from the roots to the leaves, the water especially, is conveyed through the wood only, and not through the rind, had been already sufficiently proved by the experiments of Hales and others. The uncritical treatment of experiments of this kind by Georg Christian Reichel[1] afterwards led to new errors, though his dissertation, 'De vasis plantarum spiralibus,' shows to advantage by the side of similar productions of the day
- ↑ Georg Christian Reichel was born in 1727 and died in 1771. He was Professor in the University of Leipsic.
