58 



out of memory, but for the more thoughtful, it supplied 

 matter for reflection. On the appearance of practical 

 applied electricity, many students strove to trace more 

 fully the properties and functions of electricity in nature. 

 Twenty-five years ago, now, all over Europe began a 

 series of efforts to apply electricity for the production 

 of all sorts of desirable changes in organic and inorganic 

 bodies. Experiments were tried with milk, with water, 

 with wine, with metals, in a word with every conceiv- 

 able object. 



As this electric analysis of various products is irrele- 

 vant to the matter of cosmic movement I must put it 

 aside and direct the readers attention only to those ob- 

 servations which relate to vegetation. 



If we completely isolate any vegetable growth from 

 the sunlight and leave it all the other natural conditions 

 of its existence, the growth in question will lose its co- 

 lour, wither and shrivel and die. But if instead of day- 

 light you supply the plant with electric light, the plant 

 will not only live, but will renew its functions as in na- 

 ture , but it will yield either no fruit or but very poor 

 sort. Such experiments have received frequent confirma- 

 tion, but have not hitherto led to any systematic infe- 

 rences. 



In the year 1892, in St. Petersburg, Professor Nor- 

 kyevich Yodko gave the first demonstrations of his ex- 

 perimental researches into the influence of atmospherical 

 electricity on vegetation. These experiments of this sci- 

 entist were of pre-eminent interest, because they were 

 conducted with atmospherical electricity and not with 

 artificially produced. I will try briefly to explain their 

 substance. 



Norkyevich Yodko is an agricultural landowner and 

 squire of Western Russia. For his experiment he took 

 one of his own fields of uniform ground and soil and 

 divided it in half. Both halves he sowed with corn-grain, 

 equally. After this he drove in at both ends of one half 

 a number of wooden posts, and stretched between, ac- 



