CHAPTER II 



ELECTRICITY FROM THE ATMOSPHERE AP~ 

 PLIED TO THE ROOTS OF PLANTS AND TO 

 THE SOIL SURROUNDING THEM 



IN 1891, Paulin, of the Agricultural School at 

 Beauvais, France, began a series of experi- 

 ments near Montbrison, with the expectation of 

 drawing down the atmospheric electricity in more 

 abundant quantities than had been done by pre- 

 vious experimenters. He erected what he called a 

 geomagnetifer. It was merely a tall, resinous pole 

 planted in the earth, and carrying to its top a 

 galvanized iron rod, insulated from it by porcelain 

 knobs, and terminating in five pointed branches. 

 The electricity thus collected from the atmosphere 

 was carried to the soil and distributed by means of 

 a system of underground wires to the area of ground 

 to be electrically influenced. His first experiment 

 was with potatoes. The part of the field under 

 electric influence responded in a surprising man- 

 ner, as is evidenced by the following extract from 

 a newspaper report at the time : '" The eye is 

 arrested by a perceptible irregularity in the vegeta- 

 tion of the field. Within a circle limited exactly 

 by the place occupied in the earth by the conduct- 

 ing wires of atmospheric electricity, the potato 

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