100 MR. SOLLY OX THE 



of the field. It wa^, however, noticed to turn yellow rather 

 later than the unenclosetl part. 



At a later period, when the barley had been threshed and 

 weighed, the results of the experiment were announced. It was 

 stated that the return had been at the rate of 104 bushels or 14 

 quarters per acre, not including the tail corn, and 9300 lbs. of 

 straw. But in the accounts of these results which appeared in the 

 newspapers, no comparative statement accompanied them of the 

 crop yielded by the other parts of the field, which was merely de- 

 scribed as being "a lawn recently laid down with Chevalier 

 barley and grass."* Very great interest was excited every- 

 where by the account of these experiments, and they were 

 repeated in all parts of the countiy in the following spring. 

 Amongst other places, a series of experiments on this subject 

 were made at the gardens of the Horticultural Society, of which 

 a sliort account will immediately be given. 



Amongst the earliest experiments on the influence of galvanic 

 electricity on growing plants, appear to have been some described 

 in July, 1844, by Mr. W. Ross, to the Farmers' Club at New 

 York ; at least these experiments were quoted in all firming 

 journals and newspapers, and certainly were the cause of a great 

 number of similar experiments being tried. Mr. Ross stated that, 

 having planted some seed-potatoes in drills, he buried at the one 

 end of these rows a copper plate, five feet long and fourteen inches 

 deep, and connected it by a wire with a zinc plate of the same di- 

 mensions, also buried, but two hundred feet distant, being at the 

 other end of the rows. On the 2nd of July some of these pota- 

 toes were dug up and found to be two and a half inches in dia- 

 meter, while the rows on either side, which were not under 

 the influence of the galvanic current, had not formed tubers of 

 more than half an inch in diameter. This statement, like that of 

 Dr. Forster, excited very great interest. 



The ordinary sources of electricity are the friction or contact 

 of dissimilar substances, chemical action, heat, and magnetism ; 

 and almost all the cases in which electricity is evolved may be 

 arranged under one or other of these four heads. According to 

 the mode in which it is evolved, the properties of electricity vary 

 considerably, and accordingly it is usual to divide electric effects 

 into two great classes, those which are produced by electricity of 

 quantity, or voltaic electricity, and those produced by electricity 

 of intensity, frictional or machine electricity ; the properties and 

 effects of these two great divisions are different in many very 

 important points : it will therefore be right in considering their 



* Agricultural Gazette, 1844, 741; 184.5, 249. 



