The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1912-03-11
OUR TREES FOOD MANUFACTURE

knows that some of our finest pota-
toes are raised in soil In which there
is no carbon either in the composition
of the soil or mixed with it. Our trees
along the street are about fifty or six
ty per cent water; If the water could
all be dried out of tree, half the
dry weight would be carbon so that In
forest, while the ground contains
decaying leaves and twigs which are
carbon, the amount in the soil is quite
insignificant as compared with the
amount the trees get from some other
source.
One OF the most brilliant discover
les in botany was that of the Dutch
man Ingenhouss. 1t was that the car
bon of plants is derived from the car
bon-dioxide of the atmosphere.
It is common knowledge that the
atmosphere is a mixture Of gases, the
principle ones being nitrogen. Is per
cent. oxygen little more than "a per
cent and little less than per cent
carbon-dioxide.
Suppose tree weighs twenty thou
sand pounds. which il about the
weight of an average forest tree; in
half that weight is water, and halt the
weight Of the solid material is carbon.
then an average forest tree foil con-
tain five thousand pounds of carbon.
To get this much from the atmosphere,
the tree must deprive 824 million cubic
feet of air OF its carbon-dioxide. Now
If We could multiply this number by
all the forest trees on the earth and
add to the number the carbon used by
other plants, the size of the number
would be appalling, and when at the
close of the last Century, Ingenhouss
announced his discovery to the world,
no one believed him. That plants
could get such an amount Of carbon
from the atmosphere that had relative
ly SO little in 1t was regarded by scien-
fists as absurd, and the discovery was
forgotten until about the middle Of the
last century. Liebig, a German. show
ed that Ingenhouss was right. and to-
day no one questions it. The man who
would call into question that plants
get their carbon from the atmosphere
would be regarded with as much curl
osity as a man who still believes the
earth is flat.
1t was a fact hard to accept, because
one then had to believe that all the
coal in all the coal mines of the world
was at one time in the atmosphere
and was taken up by the forests Of the
geological ages of the world.
One reason may be given why this
discovery was regarded as absurd:
No one can have an adequate con-
ception of the extent OF the atmos-
phere, we cannot see it, we may know
it's depth, its weight and its compost
ton, yet the facts about a thing un-
seen are not as convincing az the facts
about thing We can see. We can COM
pute the amounts of carbon in q tree
and easily believe the figures because
we know how the tree looks. then
when we say that IL we multiply this
by the number of trees in tho world.
the result is convincing and We arc
amazed but convinced; but when We
try to think of this much carbon being
in an atmosphere that We haven't seen
it requires very strong faith in mathe-
mates to believe that 1t may be
proven large enough to furnish this
amount of carbon, and 1t 10 not 20 sur
prising that 1ngenhouss was not be-
lieved by the people of his time.
But Liebig computed the number Of
cubic meters of atmosphere and found
that even though the percentage OF
carbon-dioxide is small, the atmos-
phere is SO large that 1t will supply
the vegetation Of the earth with car.
bon for centuries to come: But while