ELECTRIC CULTIVATION IN RELATION TO HORTICULTURE. 407 



Berthelot believes that the limitation of hydrogen in the atmosphere is 

 due to the effects of the electric currents of very high intensity upon the 

 mixture of hydrogen and oxygen constituting aqueous vapour. 



Scarcely a week passes without an addition to the list of radio- 

 active substances. Verily the life work of Faraday, Berthelot, Currie, 

 and others has enlarged the vista for those that have eyes to see. 



The portentous fact noticeable in a close examination and analysis of 

 natural operations is the excess of supply over the quantitative require- 

 ments provided by Nature to effect a given result. The Master Power 

 takes no risks whether in securing germinating results or in the electrical 

 initiation of natural processes, or indeed any other operations. For 

 instance, Becquerel states that the potential energy represented by the 

 organic matter of a culture of sunflower is only yoVo °f ^ ne available 

 solar energy supplied to the plant. 



The power of intellect and the triumphs of research and invention 

 have discovered that the stored results of the excess energy, provided 

 by the sun in prehistoric periods, are available as compensating services 

 during sunless days in our own time. For instance, we take the coal, 

 the result of past periods of solar energy absorbed in the building of 

 vast forests, and convert the carbonaceous residue into a gaseous con- 

 dition, and burn it with its proper equivalent of air in a motive-power 

 generating engine, the power of which is transformed into electro-static 

 current by a rotary machine or by a gas engine, and by Faraday's dynamo- 

 electric machine into electric-light energy, which the phenomenon of the 

 voltaic arc converts into a near resemblance of the beam of sunlight. 

 This voltaic arc provides the electric energising or actinic rays which 

 initiate and support the activity of the chlorophyll grains of the green leaf. 



As we know the same energy also secures, if required, the electro- 

 static current addition to the sum of the atmospheric electric potential 

 environment of the plant. 



So far there have been two schools of experimentalists in the science 

 of electric cultivation of plants. 



One school has applied itself to the study of the effect of electro- 

 static currents, the other to the study of the effect of the rays of the 

 voltaic electric arc. As one might expect, the investigators of the 

 pre-Faraday period belonged to the static current school. The voltaic- 

 arc experiments followed the results of Faraday's discovery by which the 

 current for the voltaic arc lamp could be produced, without involving the 

 aggregation of a cumbersome mass of batteries. 



Before Faraday's time an immense amount of ingenuity was expended 

 in the production of rotary collecting friction or influence machines, 

 which were referred to as electro-static machines. Faraday's discovery 

 diverted attention from the electro-static machine , but in recent years 

 physicists have given some attention to securing improvements in this 

 type of electric machine. Voss, Wimshurst, Pidgoon and Lemstrom may be 

 mentioned in this connection, and one must not forget the late Lord 

 Armstrong's steam collector.* 



* Further, very important improvements in induction coils have been made, 

 thanks to the X-ray and Hertz-ray applications, by which the ordinary continuous 

 current can be converted to serve electro-static continuous requirements. 



