CHAPTER IV 



ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTS IN FORCING 

 VEGETABLES AND FRUIT 



THE grower of early vegetables for market will watch 

 with interest the experimental work with electricity as 

 an aid to vegetation. Science has come to the aid of the 

 florist : first in providing facilities for subjecting bulbs 

 and shrubs to cold storage, thereby retarding them until 

 a favourable time arrives for forcing them into bloom ; 

 and secondly with anaesthetics, such as ether and chloro- 

 form, which can be used to control the dormant period 

 of plants. Apart from these special factors in promoting 

 interest, there is the general one that the great triumphs 

 won with electricity in modern times suggest almost 

 limitless powers for this wonderful agency. 



The electrification of plants is still in its infancy, but 

 experiments were first made more than a century ago. 

 The reader will be astonished to hear that the October 

 of the following : " Mr. Maimbray, at Edinburgh, 

 electrified two Myrtle trees during the whole month of 

 October ; when they put forth small branches and 

 blossoms sooner than other shrubs of the same kind 

 which had not been electrified " that this was the 

 October, not of 1911, but of 1746 ! And the record 

 must surely be authentic, for it was given by the great 

 chemist Dr. Joseph Priestley in a book published in 

 1776. So far, then, are experiments with electricity on 



