INTRODUCTION 



THE problem of food supply is one of very considerable im- 

 portance to Great Britain, which if at war with foreign 

 powers might at any moment have only its own resources to 

 rely upon, therefore, if science discovers new means by which our 

 dependence upon imported foodstuffs can be in any way lessened, 

 it is only right that these discoveries should be applied to practical 

 purposes and given a fair trial. Much has been done, and much 

 yet remains to be done, to solve the problem of how to make our 

 land more productive, but research work done by agricultural 

 colleges has been of great value in this direction. Electro-culture 

 points to the possibility of obtaining a very considerable increase 

 in our most important crops ; this has been clearly shown by 

 practical experiments. The subject is still in its infancy, and 

 there remains much to be learnt about it ; many theories have 

 been advanced, but they still require careful and tedious research 

 on the part of the scientist to either confirm or reject, but natural 

 inference from trials already made is that many of them are more 

 likely to prove true. In any case the lack of an efficient theory 

 does not debar the practical application of electricity. The rapid 

 advance of electrical science within recent years indicates that 

 we have little conception of the extent to which it may be deve- 

 loped in the future. Indeed, it is only now that we are beginning 

 to realise the immensely important part which electricity plays 

 in the Universe. There is no branch of science into which the 

 subject of electricity does not enter, and we are familiar with the 

 manifold applications of electricity in everyday life. It is of 

 interest to think of its application in medical science, for here we 

 find it stimulating the whole human system ; and the botanist 

 has shown us that plant life is, after all, " very human." The 

 plant has an organic system : it breathes, feeds and digests its 

 food. It has even been suggested that plants have nerves, and 

 scientific papers have been written by eminent men on such sub- 

 jects as " The Consciousness of Plants." Our present interest 

 will be to see what has been done by applying electricity to plant 

 life. 



