PEESENT STATE OF ORGANIC ELECTRICITY. 3 IT 



appears, at the date of the publication of his memoirs, to have 

 drawn no more precise conclusion from the facts then ob- 

 served ; and states that the electrical effects which take place 

 in vegetables are so numerous, that it has only been possible 

 hitherto to observe a limited number of them. 



M. Wartmann,* while he admits that the electro-chemical 

 action, which results from the tearing of the textures during 

 the insertion of the electrodes, produces at first a considerable 

 deflection of the needle, states, at the same time, that when 

 this action ceases, which it speedily does, there remains a more 

 feeble current, which must be due to the normal electrical 

 action of the parts. He states that vegetable currents pro- 

 bably form closed circuits ; that the extremities of the root- 

 fibres on the one hand, and the terminations of the leaves on 

 the other, establish a continuity between the ascending peri- 

 pheral and the descending central current ; while the simi- 

 larity in the electrical condition of the exterior of the bark 

 and the interior of the wood probably depends on the medul- 

 lary rays. 



To what Actions and Arrangements in the Plant are its 

 Electrical Disturbances and Currents due ? From what has 

 already been stated, it must appear that the knowledge 

 hitherto obtained of the relations and circumstances of the 

 electrical disturbances and currents in the plant is not yet 

 sufficiently precise to afford a solution of this question. Be- 

 fore the publication of Du Bois Eeymond's researches on the 

 electrical actions of muscle and nerve, and of Pacini on the 

 structure of the batteries in the Torpedo and Gymnotus, elec- 

 trical excitement in the animal body had not been accurately 

 connected with anatomical structure ; and until" a definite 

 electrical current in the plant is distinctly referred to a demon- 

 strable structural arrangement, a precise determination of the 

 exciting causes of currents in the latter cannot be expected. 



* Bib. Univ. de Geneve, torn. xv. 



