A Manual of Physiology Author:William Benjamin Carpenter Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3elements of Water, and setting free the Oxygen. This result of the nutritive operations of the simple cellular plants may be easily verified experimentally, by exposing the green scum, whi... more »ch floats upon ponds, ditches, and c., and which consists of the cells of a minute Cryptogamic Plant, to the influence of light and warmth beneath a receiver; it is found that oxygen is then liberated, by the decomposition of the carbonic acid contained in the water. We shall presently have to return to the consideration of the Chemical phenomena of living beings; and shall pass on, therefore, to consider those to which no such explanation applies. 34. The textit{second stage in the nutritive process consists in the appropriation of the new product thus generated to the enlargement of the living cell-structure;—a phenomenon obviously distinct from the preceding. It is well to observe, that this process, which constitutes the act of textit{organization, may be clearly distinguished in the higher Plants and Animals, as consisting of two stages ; the first of these being the further preparation or elaboration of the fluid matter, by certain alterations whose nature is not yet clear, so as to render it textit{organizable, or fit to undergo organization; the second being the act of organization itself, or the conversion of the organizable matter into the solid texture, and the development in it of the properties that distinguish that texture. Thus, for example, we do not find that a solution of dextrin (or starch-gum) is capable of being at once applied to the development of vegetable tissue, although it is identical in composition with cellulose ; for it must first pass through a stage, in which it possesses a peculiar glutinous character,and exhibits a tendency to spontaneous coagulation, that seems like an attempt at the pro...« less