cause why plants at certain times vitiate the surrounding air,
a cause which neither Priestley nor Scheele had suspected.
He had discovered, he says, in the summer of 1779, that all
vegetables incessantly give out carbonic acid gas, but that the
green leaves and shoots only exhale oxygen in sun-light or clear
day-light. It appears therefore that Ingen-Houss not only discovered the assimilation of carbon and the true respiration of
plants, but also kept the conditions and the meaning of the
two phenomena distinct from one another. Accordingly he
had a clear idea of the great distinction between the nutrition of germinating plants and of older green ones, the independence of the one, the dependence of the other, on light;
and that he considered the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere
to be the main if not the only source of the carbon in the
plant, is shown by his remark on a foolish assertion of Hassenfratz that the carbon is taken from the earth by the roots; he
replied that it was scarcely conceivable that a large tree should
in that case find its food for hundreds of years in the same
spot. There was a certain boldness in these utterances of
Ingen-Houss, and a considerable confidence in his own convictions, for at that time the absolute amount of carbon dioxide
in the air had not been 'ascertained, and the small quantity of
it in proportion to the other constituents of air would certainly
have deterred some persons from seeing in it the supply of the
huge masses of carbon which plants accumulate in their structures.
Before Ingen-Houss in the work last mentioned explained the results of his observations of 1779 in accordance with the new chemical views, and laid the foundations of the doctrine of nutrition in plants, Jean Senebier[1], of Geneva, made pro-
- ↑ Jean Senebier, horn at Geneva in 1742, was the son of a tradesman, and after 1765 pastor of the Evangelical Church. On his return from a visit to Paris he published his 'Moral Tales,' and at the suggestion of his friend Bonnet competed for a prize offered at Haarlem for an essay on the Art of Observation. He was awarded the second place in this competition. In 1769 he became
