Organic matter

“ This we have called inorganic matter, and it is obtained from the soil. Organic matter, although forming so large a part of the plant, we have seen to consist of four different substances. The inorganic portion, on the contrary, although forming so small a part, consists of no less than nine or ten different kinds of matter. [B] These we will consider in order. In their relations to agriculture they may be divided into three classes—alkalies, acids, and neutrals. [C]
Is the character of a compound the same as that of its constituents? ”

“ Organic chemistry was formerly defined as the chemistry of the compounds found in plants and animals; but of late it has taken a much wider range, and is now defined as the chemistry of the C compounds, since C is the nucleus around which other elements centre, and with which they combine to form the organic substances. New organic compounds are constantly being discovered and synthesized, so that nearly 100,000 are now known. The molecule of organic matter is often very complex, sometimes containing hundreds of atoms. ”

“ Animals, however simple, do eat and digest their food, plants take various mineral substances from the earth or air or water in the form of inorganic matter such as oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and all the food materials found in the soil, and transform them, with the aid of sunshine, into the structure that characterizes each particular form. Plants, then, may be defined as any living organism that, with minor exceptions, has the power to assimilate inorganic substances and transform them into organic matter. Nothing else in all the realm of nature has this power. ”

“ The organic matter of plants consists of three gases, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, and one solid substance carbon (or charcoal) . The inorganic matter of plants consists of potash, soda, lime, magnesia, sulphuric acid, phosphoric acid, chlorine, silica, oxide of iron, and oxide of manganese.
Plants obtain their organic food as follows:—Oxygen and hydrogen from water, nitrogen from some compound containing nitrogen (chiefly from ammonia) , and carbon from the atmosphere where it exists as carbonic acid—a gas.
They obtain their inorganic food from the soil. ”

“ The elements plants build with include calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, sodium, sulfur, iron, zinc, cobalt, boron, manganese, molybdenum, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen.
So organic matter from both land and sea plants fuels the entire chain of life from worms to whales. Humans are most familiar with large animals; they rarely consider that the soil is also filled with animal life busily consuming organic matter or each other. Rich earth abounds with single cell organisms like bacteria, actinomycetes, fungi, protozoa, and rotifers. ”

“ But practically, in all higher developments of either kind, other distinctions come into play; e.g., that plants can make use of inorganic matter, gases, and water, and elaborate them into organic matter. Animals cannot do this, they require more or less solid food—always requiring "complex organic bodies which they ultimately reduce to much simpler inorganic bodies. ”

“ While it is impossible, owing to the dependence of all organized matter upon inorganic matter, to give an absolute definition, we at once recognize the peculiarities of organic or living bodies as distinguished from inorganic or non-living ones. All living bodies feed, grow, and reproduce, these acts being the result of the action of forces resident within the organism. ”

“ It is clear if organic bodies were built up of chemical compounds of small complexity and great stability that this continuous range of chemical reactions, this unceasing metabolism, could not take place. It is therefore a necessary condition for organic substances that they should be built up of chemical compounds that are most complex and unstable. “Exactly those substances which are most important for life possess a very high molecular weight, and consequently very large molecules, in comparison with inorganic matter. ”

“ To enable us to say that we know anything about the experimental origination of organization and life, the investigator ought to be able to take inorganic matters, such as carbonic acid, ammonia, water, and salines, in any sort of inorganic combination, and be able to build them up into Protein matter, and that that Protein matter ought to begin to live in an organic form. ”

“ It contains in solution mineral matters and often a trace of organic matter. The organic matter comes from contact with vegetable matter and other organic materials near the surface of the earth. The mineral matter is derived from the solvent action of the water and its contents on the soil and rocks. ”

“ So unwilling, however, are most men to relinquish old notions, that the resources of chemistry have been called in, to ascertain the supposed difference between organic and inorganic matter: it being asserted, that, in the organic world, there is a greater complexity of molecular combination, than in the inorganic. ”

“ The plant gathers these inorganic materials together and makes them up into its own substance. The animal eats the plant and appropriates the nutritious portions to its own sustenance, rejects and gets rid of the useless matters; and, finally, the animal itself dies, and its whole body is decomposed and returned into the inorganic world. There is thus a constant circulation from one to the other, a continual formation of organic life from inorganic matters, and as constant a return of the matter of living bodies to the inorganic world ”

“ That is the whole process of feeding in plants: they eat carbonic acid, digest it in their leaves, get rid of the oxygen with which it was formerly combined, and keep the carbon stored up for their own purposes.
Life as a whole depends entirely upon this property of chlorophyll; for every atom of organic matter in your body or mine was originally so manufactured by sunlight in the leaves of some plant from which, directly or indirectly, we derive it. ”

“ When the organic substance so formed is ultimately consumed through plant or animal action or by inorganic means, an equivalent amount of oxygen reunites with the carbon to again form carbon dioxide. And so if the whole of the organic matter is returned to the inorganic state, no more oxygen is consumed than had been before set free in the process of forming the organic matter. ”

“ From these and numerous other experiments not worth giving, it is certain that inorganic substances, or such organic substances as are not attacked by the secretion, act much less quickly and efficiently than, organic substances, yielding soluble matter which is absorbed. ”

“ Hence the particles which are produced from dead organic matter by chemical decompositions or new consequent combinations, are found proper for the purposes of the nutrition of living vegetable and animal bodies, whether these decompositions and new combinations are performed in the stomach or beneath the soil. ”

“ Organized matter, or that which has possessed either animal or vegetable life, or which has been produced by living organs, seems to be alone capable of assimilation, to any extent, by the animal system; and hence it is from the organic kingdom that our aliments are necessarily derived. Water, iron, earthy phosphates, chloride of sodium, and other salts, which form the inorganic constituents of the body, though not of themselves nourishing, are also assimilated when taken in conjunction with organic aliments, and then contribute essentially to nutrition. ”

“ This chlorophyl-tinged protoplasm is the substratum in which carbonic acid is deprived of its oxygen, and organically incorporated. Here, and here alone, organic substance originates in Nature. [1] It is the one magic gate through which the inorganic effects its passage into the organic; the one transubstantiating medium by which the death-like spell of inertness is broken and the dormant energies of matter admitted to bloom forth into life. ”

“ The vegetable matter has lost the principle of organic life, and, that gone, the tendency of all things being to be resolved into their most simple forms, a disunion of the elements commences: oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon pass off either in the gaseous state or as water, whilst some carbon is liberated in a very finely-divided condition, and enters slowly into combination with oxygen supplied by the water or the air. Hydrogenous compounds are at the same time formed, and, under all these circumstances, as in all other chemical phenomena, an alteration of temperature results. ”

“ Darwin has upset all this, and now we cannot even draw a clear, sharp line between the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The chemist is even crossing the boundary between these and the mineral kingdom, by refuting the once positive dictum that organic substances (i.e., the compounds ordinarily formed in the course of vegetable or animal growth) cannot be produced directly from dead matter by any chemical device. Many of such organic compounds are now made in the laboratory from mineral materials. ”

“ Food-substances in this light fall into two well-marked classes—namely, into Nitrogenous and Non-nitrogenous substances. Another classification of foods divides them into organic and inorganic, the former being derived from animals and plants—that is, from living beings—while the latter are derived from the world of non-living matter. ”

“ Thus, then, the general explanation of life is now no more difficult to us than the explanation of the physical properties of inorganic bodies. All vital phenomena and formative processes of organisms are as directly dependent upon the332 chemical composition and the physical forces of organic matter as the vital phenomena of inorganic crystals—that is, the process of their growth and their specific formation—are the direct results of their chemical composition and of their physical condition. ”

“ Thus, animal and plant substances represent organic foods; while water and minerals, both of which are absolutely essential for the support of the body, represent inorganic food materials. It would appear that from living matter alone, do we obtain the materials for generating force. The inorganic water and minerals, however, appear to be absolutely necessary for the chemical alterations and changes which are continually taking place within the body. ”

“ In the organic world, every individual of necessity springs from some parent, or immediate producing agent; for while inorganic substances are formed by chemical laws alone, we see no case of an animal or plant coming into existence by accident or chance, or chemical operations.
8. Animals and plants are supported by means of nourishment, and die without it. They also increase in size by the addition of new particles of matter to all parts of their substances; while rocks and minerals grow only by additions to their surfaces. ”

“ The solvent action of water on rocks is greatly increased by the traces of organic or carbonic acids which it may contain. When surface water comes in contact with vegetable matter it may become partially charged with the organic acids which the growing vegetable may contain or decaying vegetable matter produce. ”

“ Of course, the direct transformation of inorganic matter into living animal matter is impossible. There must always occur the intermediate phenomenon of vegetable life. Vegetables can transform the inorganic chemical materials of the air and earth into their own structure, but the animal must either feed upon the products produced by the vegetable or upon other animals that have been so fed. No single definition of life, therefore, can include both animal and vegetable life, since the vegetable is an intermediate product between minerals and animals. ”

“ Water and carbonic acid are shown to be the primary constituents of the environment. Analysis shows their properties, together with those of the component elements, hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, to make up a series of maxima, among all known compounds and elements, so numerous, so varied, and so highly favorable, to the organic mechanism that the fitness of the world for life assumes an importance not less than the fitness which has been won by adaptation in the course of organic evolution. ”

“ They become conjoined, numerically and morphologically, in progressive grades of complexity, originating by one kind of alliance the chemical elements which constitute the organic world, and by another the vital elements, which form the protoplasmic basis of animal and plant life. [1053] The organic kingdom rests upon the inorganic, and preys upon it, evolving 285 itself throughout endless time into more highly differentiated forms by its incessant appetite for material acquisition and sensuous stimulation in its environment. ”

“ If he examine, in like manner, a lump of earth or rock, he will perceive no such structure. To mark this distinction, the parts of animals and vegetables, either living or dead—whether entire or in a state of decay, are called organic bodies, while earthy and stony substances are called inorganic bodies.
Organic substances are also more or less readily burned and dissipated by heat in the open air; inorganic substances are generally fixed and permanent in the fire. ”

“ By it, starting in a simple, lowly way, and growing in complexity with time, all vegetable and animal forms have since been gradually built up. In itself the organic molecule is only a more intricate chemical combination of the same elements of which the inorganic substances which preceded it are composed.... ”