132 
VEGETABLE ELECTRICITY. 
" From this train of reasoning we are led to some of the most interesting facts in 
vegetable physiology. The electro-polar condition of plants qualifies them in an 
eminent degree for the performance of those operations which develop electro- 
chemical phenomena ; and what is very remarkable, the laws of this beautiful branch 
of electricity are rigidly enforced, and admirably complied with, in the decomposition 
of carbonic acid gas by their foliage ; for, in this process, the electro-positive carbon 
is drawn to the electro-negative poles of the plants, in precisely the same manner as 
any electro-negative pole artificially made would release the carbon from the oxygen, 
and select it in preference. This remarkable fact, firmly based as it is in the strict 
principles of electrical action, not only establishes a correct view of the modus 
operandi by which plants are enabled to acquire food through the instrumentality of 
their foliage, but appears to me well calculated to give a clue to every operation by 
which vegetables become nourished, and elaborate their food in all the variety of 
structure they so abundantly and beautifully assume." 
Here we are constrained to quit Mr. Sturgeon's Essay, which, however, must be 
resumed in our next, as space is not now at command to do justice to it, or its most 
interesting subject. On that future occasion it will be made to appear that electro- 
culture is equally applicable to the flower-bed, the parterre, and the conservatory, as 
to the open fields of the farm. 
In the meantime, it should seem that Mr. Sturgeon has embodied in the thirty- 
seven pages which his article embraces, all that a philosophic and zealous electrician 
could collect, in the present state of our knowledge. Avoiding theory, he has 
adduced and relied upon evidential facts ; and so far, he does honour to his science. 
But there are minds which see that " the end is not yet," and therefore hail " the 
great hereafter." By isolating electricity, we convey a false idea of its nature and 
properties. But when we refer it to the sun, and conceive that in its beams a some- 
thing that overwhelms thought, a spiritual elementary essence, is conveyed to all 
nature, and fills every atomic particle with itself; conferring upon the ivhole, as upon 
every individual, all that constitutes the means and causes of what we term attraction 
and repulsion — in a word, all that holds nature, in its integral whole, or in its 
minutest parts, together, while it provides for an incessant disturbance, change, and 
interchange of position, — we acquire a feeling, at least, if not a demonstrative 
assurance, of an agency which could account for every phenomena in material 
creation. A mind so constituted (while inwardly convinced) is, of all others, the 
least disposed to dogmatise — it is, on the contrary, only confident in hope ; and, 
viewing the slow but sure advances in discovery, it only ventures to announce that 
the day is not remote when the terms negative and positive, vitreous and resinous, 
attraction and repulsion, so far as they are now applied to our electricity, magnetism, 
and chemistry, shall be all and severally merged in one grand theory of Solar 
Induction, simplifying every principle, and uniting indissolubly every link in the 
grand chain of causes and effects. 
