IMPOETANCE OF AIE IN MOTION. 215 



it grew there in a house in which air was necessarily in 

 constant and very rapid motion. The best flavoured Grapes 

 are ripened out of doors ; no one would compare our hot-house 

 Grapes for flavour with those of the climates where they ripen 

 naturally. The best coloured Grapes are ripened out of doors ; 

 no one ever saw ripe black Grapes deficient in colour in the 

 open air. The best Peaches, Strawberries, Apricots, are ripened 

 in the open air. The best flavoured Queen Pine I ever tasted 

 was one ripened at Bicton in the open air.* 



It is not improbable that one of the advantages of ventilation 

 depends upon a cause but little adverted to, but which certainly 

 requires to be well considered. It was an opinion of 

 Mr. Kjiight, that the motion given to plants by wind is bene- 

 ficial to them by enabling their fluids to circulate more freely 

 than they otherwise would do; and in a paper printed in the 

 Philosophical Transactions for 1803, p. 377, he adduces, in 

 suppoil; of his opinion, many experiments and observations ; 

 of which the foUowiug is sufficiently striking : — 



" The effect of motion on the oiroiilation of the sap, and the consequent 

 formation of wood, I was best able to ascertain by the following expedient. 

 Early in the spring of 1801, I selected a number of young seedling 

 Apple trees, whose stems were about an inch in diameter, and whose 

 height between the roots and first branches was between six and seven 

 feet. These trees stood about eight feet from each other ; and, of 

 course, a free passage for the wind to act on each tree was afforded. 

 By means of stakes and bandages of hay, not so tightly bound as to 

 impede the progress of any fluid within the trees, I nearly depriyed 

 the roots and lower parts of the stems of several trees of all motion, to 

 the height of three feet from the ground, leaving the upper part of the 

 stems and branches in their natural state. In the succeeding summer, 

 much new wood accumulated in the parts which were kept in motion 

 by the wind ; but the lower parts of the stems and roots increased very 

 little in size. Removing the bandages from one of these trees in the 

 following winter, I fixed a stake in the ground, about ten feet distant 

 from the tree, on the east side of it; and I attached the tree to the 

 stake at the height of six feet, by means of a slender pole, about twelve 

 feet long ; thus leaving the tree at Uberty to move towards the north 

 and south, or, more properly, in the segment of a circle, of which the 



* See p. 101. The author regrets to see that the name of Lady RoUe is mis- 

 printed Bolfe, at that pUce. 



