130 
VEGETABLE ELECTRICITY. 
not to be impugned. " Vegetables," he observed, " abound in pointed terminations 
communicating with juices passing through capillary tubes, and possessing strong 
conducting virtues, all of which circumstances must concur to adapt them for 
imbibing electric effluvium, and diffusing it through their substance. The facts 
of the constant positive electricity of the atmosphere, and the adaptation of vegetables 
to imbibe it, seem necessarily to lead to the inference that they are continually 
acting in this manner upon the atmosphere. But the inference is strongly confirmed 
by applying vegetable points to the cylinder or prime conductor of an electrical 
machine. Even a thorn or a thistle will vie with, if not excel, the sharpest needle 
in this property ; and it may be observed, that they are far better fitted to act upon 
the electricity of the atmosphere, as the deposition of moisture consequent to the 
withdrawing of the effluvium which holds it in a state of vapour, so far from dimin- 
ishing their conducting virtue, as in the case of metals, is the very principle of their 
nutrition ; so that there is reason to conclude, that the action of every point fur- 
nishes it at once with the means of its vitality, and its growth and maturation. 
A few blades of grass held towards the knob of a charged jar, the circuit being 
completed by the human body, will silently but quickly effect its discharge. This 
admirable adaptation of an atmosphere, constantly containing electric effluvium, to a 
system of vegetation, presenting strong conducting points at every extremity, in 
connection with the capillary tubes capable of imbibing and transmitting it through 
their juices to every part of its substance, forcibly indicates their mutual utility and 
dependence." 
Nothing can afford stronger proof of electric action on vegetation than the 
existence of points, which are found, by actual experiment, to attract and conduct 
away the fluid excited by the common electrifying machine ; but there is another 
consideration which ought to be taken into the account, and that is, the decom- 
position of all those substances within the soil which we call manures. It is plain 
to every one at all familiar with electro-chemistry, that not a particle of any organic 
matter can be resolved into its elements without the agency of powerful disturbing 
forces ; and, as a curious coincidence, it has been clearly shown by the experiments 
of organic chemistry — which, thanks to Liebig, have become the order of the day — 
that, in the vegetable " organism," all the specific, peculiar products of each combine 
their elements in a manner totally at variance with that of ordinary chemical 
arrangement. In the latter, the inorganic constituents combine in certain and 
definite proportions ; either simply, as unity with unity, that is as one equivalent of 
acid, with one of its alkaline base ; or, if not restricted to one, yet always in some 
multiple proportion of that equivalent ; thus, " the same chemical compound 
invariably contains the same elements in unvarying proportions." But in organic 
chemistry, the elements of gum, sugar, oils, essences, balsams, vegetable acids, are 
not so arranged. Those are, indeed, but three or four in number ; yet they combine 
in a way, an$ to an extent, altogether complicated and extraordinary. When we 
contemplate the agency by which these infinitely diversified combinations are 
