132 
VEGETABLE ELECTRICITY. 
I 
“ From this train of reasoning we are led to some of the most interesting facts ii 
vegetable physiology. The electro-polar condition of plants qualifies them in ai 
eminent degree for the performance of those operations which develop electros 
chemical phenomena ; and what is very remarkable, the laws of this beautiful brand 
of electricity are rigidly enforced, and admirably complied with, in the decompositioi 
of carbonic acid gas by their foliage ; for, in this process, the electro-positive carboi 
is drawn to the electro-negative poles of the plants, in precisely the same manner a: 
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 stric 
principles of electrical action, not only establishes a correct view of the modu 
operandi by which plants are enabled to acquire food through the instrumentality o 
their foliage, but appears to me well calculated to give a clue to every operation h 
which vegetables become nourished, and elaborate their food in all the variety o 
structure they so abundantly and beautifully assume.” 
Here we are constrained to quit Mr. Sturgeon’s Essay, which, however, must b( 
resumed in our next, as space is not now at command to do justice to it, or its mos 
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, a; 
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 electriciai 
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 “tin 
great hereafter.” By isolating electricity, we convey a false idea of its nature ant 
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 al 
nature, and fills every atomic particle with itself; conferring upon the ivliole, as upoi 
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 it 
minutest parts, together, while it provides for an incessant disturbance, change, am 
interchange of position, — we acquire a feeling, at least, if not a demonstrate 
assurance, of an agency which could account for every phenomena in materia 
creation. A mind so constituted (while inwardly convinced) is, of all others, tin 
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 tha 
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 Sola 
Induction , simplifying every principle, and uniting indissolubly every link in tin 
grand chain of causes and effects. 
