VIII. Static diffusion of gases and liquids in relation to the assimilation of carbon and translocation in plants

Abstract

During the course of an investigation which we have been carrying out in the Jodrell Laboratory during the past two or three years, with the ultimate object of extending our knowledge of the process of the fixation of carbon by green plants, we have been led to examine somewhat minutely the purely physical processes by which the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere is in the first place able to gain access to the active centres of assimilation. In following up this line of work we have been led to some unexpected results, and to the discovery of certain facts connected with gaseous and liquid diffusion which have been hitherto unnoticed, and which appear to be of considerable interest, not only in their physical aspects, but also from the explanations they suggest of certain natural processes in plants (and perhaps also in animals) in which the transference of gaseous or dissolved substances depends more or less on diffusivity . In the present communication, which is intended to be one of a series descriptive of our researches, we shall, as far as possible, confine ourselves to the physical pheno­mena, touching only on the physiological questions in so far as they are necessary.