256 On the Culture of the Mango and Cherimoyer. 



during the years 1825 and 1826, in the stove, and I have ob- 

 served similar derangements of the proper growth of the 

 plants, similar protrusion of buds upon different parts of the 

 stems, and, apparently, consequent failure of the blossoms. 

 The cause of these circumstances I was" wholly at a loss to 

 conjecture till the spring of the present year, when I had 

 the honor to receive from an eminent French naturalist, M. 

 Dutrochet,* a publication which afforded me much new 

 and important information respecting the causes of the 

 motion of the fluids, and of the various secretions of plants : 

 and the facts he adduced led me confidently to believe 

 that the ill success of both my experiments had arisen from 

 an excessive or injurious action of electric matter upon the 

 roots of my plants, owing to the exposure of the surfaces 

 of the pots to the air. A pot containing a plant of the 

 Cherimoyer, which was by no means in a healthy state, was 

 in consequence immediately plunged to its top in mould, 

 which was kept in a moist state, and pressed closely round 

 it. The effects of this were precisely such as I had anti- 

 cipated : the buds ceased to spring from the stem and larger 

 branches of the plant, whilst the extremities of it began to 

 elongate, and in six weeks it acquired a perfectly healthy ap- 

 pearance, which it still retains. The buds of this species of 

 fruit tree being wholly concealed from view beneath the 

 centre of the base of the leaf-stalks, it is wholly impossible 

 to decide at this period whether blossom-buds are forming for 



* Of Chateau-Renaud, a Foreign Corresponding Member of this Society. 

 The object of his work, to which I wish to refer the Society, is to point out 

 " L'agent immediatdu mouvement vital devoiledans sa nature, et dans son mode 

 d'action chez les vegetaux et chez les ammanx." 



