6i 4 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Liebig's researches and writings, yet Sturgeon realised that, in 

 spite of the obvious benefits that were resulting from the 

 application of pure chemistry to the questions of soil and plant, 

 a greater knowledge of the life-activities of the plant would 

 be required before agriculture could develop to its fullest 

 extent. As this writer has been completely neglected, we feel 

 justified in giving one or two quotations from his paper. He 

 says, for instance, " By what powers, or by what physical forces, 

 do the organs of plants display, and keep in operation, their 

 respective functions of vegetable life, is a problem of vast 

 importance in the basement of agricultural science, and in 

 every other branch of vegetable culture. This grand problem, 

 the solution of which has not yet been accomplished, nor, indeed, 

 scarcely attempted, presents the most formidable, and, at 

 the same time, the most noble bulwark yet to be assailed in our 

 inquiries respecting the functions of vitality in the vegetable 

 kingdom." And again : " The rules of his art will always 

 enable the practical chemist to be of much service in providing 

 food for plants, although it may require a higher order of 

 investigations than those he is in the habit of pursuing to 

 discover the character and operations of those forces which 

 stimulate the organs of vegetables to avail themselves of the 

 food thus supplied for their use." 



However, in spite of these laudable views put forward in 

 1 846, the subsequent history of electroculture is little else than 

 a repetition of the earlier. An enormous number of researches 

 have been conducted on the subject, but the vast majority 

 are on exactly the same lines as the older ones, and the results 

 are similar, i.e. the majority show favourable influence on 

 germination, growth, and final yield resulting from electrifica- 

 tion, a minority show no such improvement resulting. No 

 leading principles are brought out and no contributions from 

 other branches of science throw light on the subject. 



It was during this period that the science of the physiology 

 of plants was obtaining a certain amount of recognition, but un- 

 fortunately instead of developing along its own lines as the 

 science of the living plant, and evolving its own guiding 

 principles, it became subservient on the one hand to morpho- 

 logical botany, on the other to chemistry, with the result that 

 although much has become known about individual processes 

 in isolated organs over short periods of time, and still more con- 



