No. 4. 



Effects of Charcoal on Vegetation. 



123 



state ; the calceolarias and salvias had some 

 yellow leaves, but had made young shoots; 

 a species of petunia, even flowered on the 

 box being opened ; the verbenas only had 

 suffered, but were still alive; the young cab- 

 bage and cucumber plants taken out of dung 

 beds had rotted, but without injuring any of 

 the plants lying beside them ; cut flowers of 

 many different sorts, kept perfectly fresh in 

 pure dry charcoal, from eight to fourteen 

 days. Radishes, parsnips, onions, and the 

 turnip-like roots of oxalis lasiandra, Zucc, 

 attained a considerable size in a bed filled 

 one foot deep with pure charcoal; the roots 

 of tulips, which had produced flowers in the 

 spring, being planted in the same bed, flow- 

 ered again, perfectly well, late in the au- 

 tumn. 



To prove if any difference existed with 

 respect to the efficacy of different sorts of 

 charcoal, the garden inspector, M. Seitz, had 

 charcoal made from eight kinds of wood, viz. : 

 oak, linden, ash, beech, alder, willow, elm 

 and fir. They were found to have almost 

 exactly similar effects. It was very differ- 

 ent with animal charcoal, which in this ex- 

 periment, produced the most favourable re- 

 sults; many leaves rooted in them which 

 had not succeeded in the wood charcoal, and 

 some very soon produced shoots. 



Zuccarini says that those leaves were 

 found to vegetate most freely, which had 

 strong prominent veins. The cut ends of 

 these being placed in the charcoal, a small 

 tuber or callosity, formed upon the extremity 

 of each. These attained the size of a large 

 pea before putting out roots, and from them 

 proceeded the germ, or shoot, which formed 

 the new plant ; each vein thus producing a 

 separate plant. He found it of advantage, 

 as soon as the growth of the tuber was suffi- 

 ciently advanced, to remove the cutting from 

 the coal into a proper sort of mould, and, by 

 this means, the little knob beino - able to pro- 

 vide its own nourishment, will prevent the 

 untimely exhaustion of the parent leaf. If 

 this precaution is delayed, an entire stoppage 

 takes place in the growth; the knob pro- 

 duces neither roots nor buds, and dies ; be- 

 cause the parent leaf cannot yield any more 

 nourishment; and the charcoal appears to 

 him to have a preserving and stimulating, 

 rather than a nourishing quality. 



W. Neubert, of Tubingen, discovers, how- 

 ever, that by the use of charcoal, plants thrive 

 permanently in much smaller pots than here- 

 tofore. He had primulas, eight years old, 

 with stems a foot and a half high, growing 

 and blooming luxuriantly in pots of two inch- 

 es diameter. He transplants them every au- 

 tumn, and takes away half the ball of roots 

 and all the side shoots, and is careful to keep 



them tolerably moist. He finds his plants 

 (quite the reverse of Lucas's experience,) 

 produced much fewer roots than usual, and 

 conjectures that this may be owing to his 

 having used beach coal instead of fir, as Lu- 

 cas did. 



Dr. Buchner undertakes to explain upon 

 scientific principles, the wonderful effects of 

 charcoal. He ascribes them in part to the 

 power possessed by that substance of absorb- 

 ing light and heat to a very great degree, in 

 consequence of its dark colour and extreme 

 porosity; and also to its capacity for absorb- 

 ing atmospheric air. Among all the bodies 

 capable of absorbing gases and vapors, char- 

 coal has been proved by numerous experi- 

 ments, to hold the first rank. Consequently, 

 when long exposed to atmospheric action, it 

 imbibes many qualities highly conducive to 

 vigorous vegetation, and is the means of con- 

 veying to the roots of plants, besides light 

 and heat, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, in 

 great abundance. 



He remarks that for a long time it was 

 generally supposed that charcoal, as an in- 

 animate body, incapable of decay, contri- 

 buted, in no degree, to the nourishment of 

 plants, and that charcoal dust could only 

 serve, at most, to make the earth looser and 

 warmer. But Lucas found that the char- 

 coal in which plants grew, by degrees un- 

 derwent decomposition. 



Judging from the effects of charcoal on 

 vegetation, its antiseptic properties are of 

 great importance. It has very little power 

 of retaining water; and this property de- 

 serves great attention, in respect to reco- 

 vering the health of plants which have 

 been injured by being in a clayey soil, or 

 too freely watered, or after continued rain, 

 or being in contact with manure not suffi- 

 ciently decomposed. 



Lucas has not confined his experiments to 

 coal. He has for six years been making use 

 of snoio in the germination of certain kinds 

 of seeds, chiefly those of alpine plants. He 

 first put into pots a portion of earth, the 

 most suitable to the kind of plant to be cul- 

 tivated; then a layer of snow, then the seed, 

 and covered it with another layer of snow. 

 He then set them in a box covered with 

 glass, and placed it in a temperature of 59° 

 to 60° Fah., in which the snow melted. 

 Many of the seeds germinated in two days. 

 He even succeeded with the purple crotala- 

 ria, which he had never done before by any 

 other method. After germination, he sprin- 

 kles a little sand over the seed. 



Professor I. Liebig, of Giessen, who has 

 devoted so much learned research to agri- 

 cultural chemistry, is of opinion, "that the 

 loose formation of the snow, which allows 



