supplied to them from without; and whether these elements
are such essential constituents of the vegetable organism, as to be required for its full development.' The first question
appears in the present day absurd, since it implies the possibility of elementary matter coming into being, and of certain
special elements coming into being in the plants themselves,
an idea however not unfamiliar to the nature-philosophy and the vital force school. It was easy for Wiegman and Polstorff, the authors of the essay that gained the prize (1842), men of
the new school, to answer the first question in the negative, and indeed their answer to the second question involved a negative answer to the first. The investigations made by Wiegman and Polstorff in connection with the subject of the
second question were conducted in a thoroughly intelligent
manner, though they set out from the hypothesis that a certain
quantity of compounds of humic acid, as it was called, must
be present in the food-mixtures. Their experiments, better
adapted to the purpose than any previous ones, showed convincingly that it is necessary to the normal nutrition of the
plant that it should take up the constituents of the ash; the
observers also took into consideration a number of other
questions connected with nutrition, in which however we
may already see the influence of Liebig's book which had come out during their investigations.
This work was the one entitled 'Die organische chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologic,' which appeared first in 1840 and was afterwards repeatedly reprinted and enlarged. The name of the author, the first chemist of Germany, raised an expectation that the questions respecting nutrition would be dealt with otherwise than they had hitherto been, and this expectation was more than fulfilled by the novelty and boldness with which Liebig cleared up the most important points of the theory, seized upon all that was essential and fundamental, and disregarded the unimportant matter which had before only served to confuse the question.
