254 



EXPLANATIONS. 



that these views are presented in my book as c. rrectly at 



it was possible for me to give them, who am nothing but 

 a general student : in one instance I have employed the 

 language of a popular treatise (Dr. Lord's) — ridiculed by 

 our reviewer as a book of no authority — merely because 

 fthe ideas were there presented in a peculiarly intelligible 

 form. The general aim was, I can honestly declare, to 



Almighty deviser might establish " the forms of plants 1 that sueh 

 crystallizations grow by simple apposition of new matter, and not 

 from germs, as actual vegetables do •, the question at issue being 

 merely, whether the electricity concerned in the crystallization 

 might notiiave some similar effect in determining the forms of the 

 vegetables. I may here remark that I am not alone in surmising 

 some common root for these phenomena. In Leithead's Electricity 

 (1837) the following passage occurs :-— " The form of the route of 

 free electricity is modified by the medium through which it passes, 

 and also by the electric state of such medium, or of that of the 

 relative electrical condition of two bodies between which it is 

 transmitted. If the medium through which it passes possesses a 

 very inferior conducting power, it is obvious that a certain mo- 

 mentum must be requisite to enable the fluid to force its passage to 

 a given distance, and there will be a point at which the momentum 

 of the fluid and the resistance of the body will exactly counter- 

 balance each other ; but so soon as the electricity has again accu- 

 mulated to a sufficient degree to overcome the resistance, it will 

 again force its way in another direction, until it arrives at another 

 point of equilibrium. In this way we may readily see the modus 

 operandi of the electric fluid in imparting regular forms to bodies ; 

 and it is highly probable that its action in this respect extends to 

 the vegetable kingdom, and perhaps operates even on animals, from 

 the time in which they exist in the embryo state. . . . Another 

 fact in support of the opinion, that the distinctive forms of bodies 

 are produced by electrical action, is, that crystals, and the twigs 

 and leaves of vegetables, all terminate in points or sharp edges, so 

 that the electrical action can proceed no further in increasing the 

 growth, or, in other words, in propelling fresh portions of matter 

 for the extension of the plant, or the crystal, beyond the pointed 

 or edged termination." In a letter of Mr. Crosse to Mr. Leithead, 

 it is stated that, in one of his experiments, there £rew in the in- 

 side of an electrified jar filled with hydro-sulphuret of potash a 

 mineral fungus, three-fourths of an inch in length and one-fourth 

 of an inch in diameter, " in the shape of a common trumpet-mouthed 

 fungus, which is found on trees " " In one experiment," says Mr 

 "Wpekes, in a recent letter to myself, " a singularly beautiful elec- 

 tro-vegetation was produced, a forest in miniature, which, by aid 

 of a good Jens, presented many extraordinary appearances, and 

 continued to interest me during many months." It may suit the 

 reviewer and others to scoff at such " resemblances but scof- 

 fing will not annul, in my mind, the apprehension that there is 

 here some relation of a very high interesting kind, the investigation 

 of which may yet give us a deeper insight than we now enjoy in 

 the mysteries of organic being. 



