Unpublished paper, 'On carbonic acid as a solven in the process of vegetation' by John Davy

Description

Davy describes the results of experiments made with water saturated with carbonic acid, in many instances condensed by pressure and supersaturated, on the more important inorganic elements of plants, compounds not soluble in water alone, such as phosphate of lime and silica. These results appear to prove that this acid performs in the economy of growing plants a double function; one well-known, already carefully studied, by which, undergoing decomposition in the leaves under the influence of solar light, it supplies carbon to the growing vegetable, and restores oxygen to the atmosphere; the other, hitherto little attended to, in which it acts as a menstruum, conveying certain compounds, insoluble in water, from the soil into the interior of plants to become constituents of their organism. The experiments Davy details are of two kinds, one set being on single compounds, the other on a mixture of these compounds. The results of the latter seem to prove that water impregnated with carbonic acid is capable of dissolving several substances at the same time, and of keeping them mixed in solution, as carbonate of lime, carbonate of magnesia, phosphate of lime and silica.

Marked on back as 'Archives 20 January 1848 S H C [Samuel Hunter Christie]'.

Subject: Inorganic chemistry

Received 24 March 1847.

Written by Davy in Barbados.

Whilst the Royal Society declined to publish this paper in full, an abstract of the paper was published in volume 5 of Abstracts of the Papers Printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London [later Proceedings of the Royal Society] as 'On carbonic acid as a solvent in the process of vegetation'.

Reference number

AP/29/1

Earliest possible date

15 February 1847

Physical description

Ink on paper

Page extent

12 pages

Format

Manuscript