ELEC7R0-H0R TICUL TURK. 



733 



anything like a sensation now, unless it is something en- 

 tirely out of the old lines. 



Of the first-earlies, we yet retain Early Ruby as the 

 best, notwithstanding its dwarf growth. It gave us nice, 

 smooth, well-ripened fruit continuously from July i8 

 until the close of the season. All other first-early sorts, 

 like Vaughan Earliest, King of the Earlies, Atlantic 

 Prize, Early Advance, etc., although some of them 

 ripen as soon as Early Ruby, and all are much thriftier 

 growers than that sort, have deficiencies in size, shape, 

 or texture, which must rule them out as varieties for 

 general planting. Early Ruby is the only tomato of 

 that class which gives smooth, solid fruit. 



Para Grove was sent us from Louisiana. I., is a large, 

 round, red, smooth variety, resembling Chemin, and, 

 like it, not so solid a tomato as is now required. Pon- 

 derosa again produced a fair but not large crop of its 

 enormously heavy fruit. It is surely the most solid to- 

 mato we have, being almost all clear meat, and having 

 but few seeds. It will be valuable as a parent of new 



sorts, but in its present shape it is not smooth enough to 

 catch the popular taste. Baltimore Prizetaker is a good 

 tomato, yet perhaps not superior to many of the best 

 older ones. Picture Rock seems to have a future. It is 

 a fine, prolific red sort. Moneymaker belongs to the 

 first-earlies, but has shown no qualities which would 

 render it preferable to Early Ruby. Matchless seems 

 truly hard to match, unless Majestic, which somewhat 

 resembles it, should prove to equal it. Tuerkenbund 

 (Turk's Cap) produces a large crop of small tomatoes, 

 which in shape resemble a miniature Turk's cap. It is 

 curious but not useful. We also had some red and pur- 

 ple sports of Mikado, seed of which was sent us by a 

 grower in southern Niagara Falls. They resemble Po- 

 tato Leaf in shape and texture, and are well worth grow- 

 ing in the home-garden. 



The Fig (Yellow Gage) tomato is still interesting. It 

 is an extremely vigorous grower, producing great clus- 

 ters of small, handsome, yellow, plum-like tomatoes, of 

 a peculiar fruity flavor. 



ELECTRO-HORTICULTURE. 



MPORTANT EXPERIMENTS MADE AT 



LECTRIC LIGHT profoundly af- 

 fects many plants, some inju- 

 riously, and a few beneficially. 

 Lettuce appears to be greatly 

 assisted by the light, and some 

 ornamental plants produce earlier 

 and brighter flowers under its in- 

 fluence. The earlier experiments 

 were all made with an arc-lamp, 

 which hung inside the house, and it was found that better 

 results were obtained when the arc was screened by an 

 opal globe, or even by a pane of window-glass. The 

 question at once arose, if this screen could not be af- 

 forded with equal advantage by the glass roof itself if 

 the light were hung above it ; and if this were true, it 

 must then be determined how far the beneficial effects of 

 the light would extend, or, in other words, how much 

 glass one light can cover. It is this particular point 

 •which the following paper considers. 



The experiments which we shall now consider were 

 made in order to determine what are the effects upon a 

 few common plants of an electric street-lamp suspended 

 above a greenhouse. The arrangement of the experi- 

 ment will be understood at a glance from the cross-sec- 

 tion of the houses under discussion, on page 735. It will 

 be noticed that there are two parallel houses ; each is 

 divided in the middle into two compartments. These 

 houses are 60x20 feet. In the valley between the 

 houses the lamp was hung, and the arc was six feet above 

 the nearest glass. The lamp was hung in front of a 

 large, blackened sheet-iron screen, which, in connection 

 with the partition in the house and a series of curtains, 

 completely excluded the light from the compartment be- 



CORNELL UNIVERSITY IN tSgi-lSga. 



hind the lamp. By moving the screen to the other side 

 of the lamp and rearranging the curtains, we were 

 able to throw all the light into the other compartment ; 

 this change was made during the experiment. The lamp 

 was attached to an ordinary street-lighting system, and it 

 seldom burned after 11 o'clock, while it often ran but an 

 hour or two, and on moonlight nights not at all. The 

 lighted house was exposed to sunlight during the day, 

 and in addition received this small and varying amount 

 of electric light. The other, or so-called dark house, 

 was lighted by sun during the day, and received no light 

 at night. The lamp carried a clear glass globe, so that 

 the light passed through two panes of glass — the globe 

 and the roof — before reaching the plants. 



The upper house — comprising the compartments A and 

 B — is what we term a coolhouse, and it was used for 

 lettuce, endive, radishes, beets, spinage, cauliflower, 

 violets and daisies. This is the house in which the exper- 

 iments were mostly conducted, because the two compart- 

 ments of the other house have unlike roofs, and are, there- 

 fore, not. comparable. These houses, A and B, are the 

 ones which were used in the experiments reported last 

 year. Lettuce was grown on benches i, 3 and 4 ; 

 radishes upon the same, mostly between lettuce-plants ; 

 beets upon 2 ; cauliflowers upon 3 ; and the other plants 

 upon 2. Bench No. 1 is not shown in the illustration. 

 The lower houses, C D, were used for tomatoes, cucum- 

 bers and beans; and, as I shall not refer to those houses 

 again, it may here be said that I was unable to detect 

 any influence whatever of the light upon these three 

 sorts of plants. 



Lettuce. — Our main crop was lettuce, for in previous 

 experiments we had found a decidedly beneficial in- 



