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VEGETABLE ELECTEICITY. 
A geeat deal of mystery is involved in this subject, to which we have adverted 
occasionally ; and in all probability it will be long ere the mind shall be enabled to 
penetrate the veil that has obscured it. Still, however, the light that has already 
dawned is considerable, and recent discoveries have been of a nature and importance 
which must furnish a stimulus to more energetic researches. 
The late attempts to introduce electro-culture upon the farm, though attended 
only by negative results, have not been useless ; this we shall attempt to prove by 
an appeal to a treatise which has recently appeared in the Edinburgh Journal of 
Agriculture ; but previously, will take a retrospective view of the theory of a French 
philosopher, that appears to have been almost forgotten. 
In the years 1826-7, and 8, M. Dutrochet, correspondent of the Institute of 
Paris, undertook to investigate the peculiar motion of the fluids in the leaf of the 
greater Celandine, which had been observed by M. Schultz, of Berlin, who satisfied 
himself " that he saw two distinct currents, one ascending, the other descending." 
M. Dutrochet soon after published four papers, the first entitled, " U agent immediat 
du mouvement vital, devoile dans sa nature, et dans sa mode d'action, chez les vege- 
tans et chez les animaux." The author gave it as his opinion, that " the motions of 
fluids in plants depends upon two currents of electricity, setting with very unequal 
force between the denser fluid of the tree and the lighter fluid of the soil ; the more 
powerful current setting from the soil to the tree, and so producing absorption, by 
conveying aqueous particles into the roots through the vegetable membrane called the 
epidermis." Notwithstanding his own ingenious and almost conclusive experiments, 
concordant in their results with others which are produced by voltaic action, M. 
Dutrochet relinquished his theory : but since the publication of Dr. Faraday's 
Researches, and more recent magneto- electrical experiments, the evidence of a pre- 
dominant, all-pervading electric agency, becomes undeniable ; and it will not be 
long before the philosopher will claim it as his only interpreter of all the leading 
phenomena of vegetable and animal nature. 
When M. Dutrochet made his experiments, there were few professional men, or 
philosophers, who were at all prepared to admit the agency of this elementary mat- 
ter in the phenomena of vegetable life and nutrition ; hence the mathematician 
would be inclined to refer to the pure science of numbers and calculation any natural 
phenomenon, rather than to an agency which could not, in the then state of know- 
ledge, be discovered, or traced by any of the senses ; and this appears to have been 
the case with M. Dutrochet. Still, there were minds which penetrated the mysteries 
of truth, by the aid of analogical evidence, and boldly announced their opinions. 
Thus in 1827 a writer, under the initials T. P., called the attention of the 
cultivator to the following facts, which, though little attended to, were palpable, and 
VOL. XIII. — no. cl. s 
