Unpublished paper, 'An experimental inquiry into the influence of nitrogen in promoting vegetable decomposition, and the connexion of this process with the growth of plants' by Robert Rigg

Description

Rigg suggests that vegetable bodies in nature undergo spontaneous decomposition when kept under circumstances favouring such action. A variety of experiments are detailed and tabulated, the first series of which contains those made on solutions of compounds, such as sugar, honey and extract of malt, showing that in each that the amount of spontaneous decomposition is in proportion to the quantity of nitrogen it contains. This law is found to extend to parts of plants which are not in solution in water, but which remain in their natural state, only having their texture broken down. Rigg infers from his experiments that the chemical action to which any vegetable matter is naturally disposed, may, to a certain extent, be changed into another, differing both in its kind and in its products.

Subject: Organic chemistry

Received 21 March 1839. Read 30 May 1839. Communicated by the Rev J B [Joseph Bancroft] Reade.

Whilst the Royal Society declined to publish this paper in full, an abstract of the paper was published in volume 4 of Abstracts of the Papers Printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London [later Proceedings of the Royal Society] as 'An experimental inquiry into the influence of nitrogen in promoting vegetable decomposition, and the connexion of this process with the growth of plants'.

Reference number

AP/23/16

Earliest possible date

March 1839

Physical description

Ink on paper

Page extent

21 pages

Format

Manuscript