618 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



appear to have been obsessed with the idea that extremely 

 high voltages are necessary, while at the same time in the 

 construction of apparatus they neglect arranging for sufficient 

 output of current. 



It is unfortunate that none of the physicists who associate 

 their names with electroculture investigations should have taken 

 the trouble to work out the physical questions involved. It 

 was left to a pure physicist, working from quite another point 

 of view, to put forward the considerations which enable us to 

 formulate the conditions of the discharge (see J. S. Townsend, 

 Phil. Mag., 19 14). 



That the publication early in this century of Lemstrom's 

 book on Electricity in Agriculture and Horticulture, translated 

 into several languages, should have given rise to a large number 

 of fresh experiments is not surprising. It is unfortunate that 

 neither plant physiology nor scientific agriculture should have 

 been sufficiently advanced at this time to give their contribution 

 to the subject. As a result recent development has consisted 

 almost entirely in the application of all possible devices for the 

 production of high-tension current which electrical industry 

 has evolved for other purposes. However, a certain amount 

 of empirical information has been collected, for instance, in 

 this country by Mr. J. E. Newman, Mr. William Low, and Miss 

 E. C. Dudgeon, but our knowledge of the subject is not greater 

 than when Lemstrdm left it, in spite of improvements in 

 apparatus. 



We hope we have made it clear in the foregoing pages that 

 the history of electroculture presents an ever-recurring cycle 

 of experiments having as their object the proof or disproof 

 that the electric discharge has a beneficial effect on vegetation. 

 That both these results should be obtained regularly in the cycle 

 should be sufficient to inform us that there must be something 

 fundamentally wrong in the method of inquiry. This, in our 

 opinion, is to be found in the neglect of quantitative measure- 

 ment of the discharge, and in the lack of knowledge of the 

 science of the living plant. This may perhaps be more easily 

 understood if we give a few details of a parallel series of 

 investigations by H. Molisch published in 191 2. 



Molisch was concerned with the influence of radium emana- 

 tion on plant life. We find in Molisch 's work a realisation of 

 the principles of the application of stimuli, that the effect 



