61 



and fuller growth than the fourth, facing north ; uncler 

 the influence of electric light, however this tendency 

 disappeared and the plant grew equally on all four sides. 



Without lunar light as a product of solar heat, the 

 very existence ot a vegetable kingdom would become 

 impossible in the night time. As a human being forti- 

 fies his body for further effort in the day by sleep, so 

 our flora, as I said before, recruits and renews its po- 

 wers and exhausted parts in the hours of the night. We 

 see in this the grand function of the moon. 



Obviously this view of lunar activity is utterly con- 

 trary to the opinions of our physical geographers, since 

 the marine tides have nothing to do with the earths ve- 

 getation; nevertheless my theory is founded on scientific 

 research in the vegetable kingdom, while the current 

 theory of the tides is a mere groundless hypothesis, 

 which also it is likely to remain. For, as I have poin- 

 ted out' if the moon raises the water to a height of ten 

 or more sazhen, why does it not draw the solid surface 

 of the earth, if only an arshin? Every one knows that 

 it has no such influence. The whole theory of -lunar 

 magnetism acting on the sea is a mere hyperbolical 

 dogma ot a science, which baulked of an adequate ex- 

 planation, has come to a dead stand before a phenome- 

 non which it is not able to account for. 



Further on, when I come to speak of our earth as a 

 reasonable acting member of the solar system and a li- 

 ving organism, I shall return to this inexplicable pheno- 

 menon. Meanwhile we may note that the moment we 

 analyse the general picture of planetary and solar life 

 we cannot help remarking the inadequacy of the exposi- 

 tion founded on the supposed attraction of the moon. 

 Our earth has only one moon and two flood and two 

 ebb tides per diem. Mars has 3 moons, so must have 

 on the same principle six flood and six ebb tides ; Ju- 

 piter must have ten, and Saturn eighteen. But the day 

 on Jupiter and Saturn is two and a half times shorter 



