76 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



3, The proportion of albuminous matter does not appear to be 

 sensibly influenced by the electricity, but those plants from which 

 the electricity is withheld appear to contain less water and more 

 mineral content. 



4. Tall plants have a mischievous influence upon the develop- 

 ment of those which grow at their feet, not only because they 

 deprive them of heat and light, but also because they absorb the 

 atmospheric electricity. 



Cell, shortly afterwards, reached similar results, while Naudin 

 arrived at directly opposite conclusions. But the signal results 

 obtained by the first three experimenters are generally accepted as 

 strong evidence that normal atmospheric electricity is in some way 

 beneficial to vegetation, and that iu the experiments of Naudin 

 there must have been some unknown conditions which obscured 

 the results. 



By far the best investigations upon the electrification of the 

 atmosphere in reference to plant-growing with which I am 

 acquainted, are those made in Finland and France by Professor 

 Lemstrom, physicist in the University of Helsingfors, with whom 

 I have the pleasure of acquaintance. Lemstrom was first led to 

 his inquiries by observations upon vegetation and meteoi'ological 

 phenomena — especially auroras — in the high north, particularly 

 in Finnish Lapland and Spitzbergen, where he came to the 

 conclusion that much of the rapidity of vegetation in the short 

 summers is due to climatic electricity. His first experiments were 

 made in the laboratory in 1885, and the results were so promishig 

 that he •at once turned his attention to the field. During the 

 summer of 1885, Lemstrom made an experiment upon a small field 

 of barley, in Finland. One portion or the field was covered with 

 small parallel wires, a meter apart, and secured to porcelain 

 insulators upon short posts at the margins of the field. At 

 intervals of a half meter, each wire was furnished with a metal 

 point from which the current could discharge into the atmosphere. 

 This covering of wires was attached to the positive pole of a four- 

 disc Holtz machine, which supplied the current. The current was 

 ai)plied from the middle of June till the first of September, from 

 six to ten o'clock in the morning, and from five to nine o'clock in 

 the evening. The barley was well up when the experiment began. 

 The harvest showed that the electric plot was over 35 per cent 

 ahead of the remainder of the field in yield, and the quality of the 

 grain was improved. 



