Second Repokt Upon Electko-Horticulture. 207 



Now, in the light house, the best of these three plots was ISTol, 

 2, the seeds which came from the low plant figured above; and 

 the second best plot was No. 3, th^ commercial seed. In the 

 dark house, however, the best plot was No. 1, or that coming 

 from the poor plant shown above ; the second best was plot No. 2. 

 Thus it will be seen that commercial seed was always second or 

 third; while No. 1 was once best and once third, and No. 2 waisl 

 once best and once second. But it should be said that it was very 

 difficult to distinguish between 1 and 2, while commercial seeds 

 gave obviously poorer results. Two lessons are apparent from 

 this test: 1. The characters of the parent plants were noty 

 hereditary. 2. Our own seed gave better results than commercial 

 seed, and this was no doubt due to the fact that our seed, coming 

 from single plants, had a less mixed or variable parentage than 

 the other. 



We shall now return to the influence of the light upon the 

 spinage. A month after the light started, there ha\ing been an 

 average of about five hours per night of electric light, all the 

 spinage in the light house was from ten to fifteen per cent larger 

 than in the dark house and there was no greater disposition to 

 run to seed; and this advantage was maintained, if not augmented, 

 throughout the experiment. This result was unexpected, for in 

 our first experiment spinage was very much injured by the light; 

 but in that experiment the light was naked and was inside the 

 house and the results are therefore not comparable with the 

 present ones. 



Cauliflower. — On January 8, 1892, two dozen good cauli- 

 flower plants four inches high and bearing four or five leaves, 

 were placed in six-inch pots and divided between the two houses, 

 on bench No. 2. The plants in the lighthouse were ten feet 

 from the lamp, and almost under it, so that they received the 

 full glare of light. A month later, ninety three hours of light 

 having been expended, the plants in the dark house were notice- 

 ably stouter and more stocky than those in the lighthouse, and 

 two of the plants were forming heads, while those in the other' 

 house showed no sign of heading. A week later, four good heads 

 were growing in the dark house, one of them reaching a diameter 



