JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
510 
; [ June 23, 1881. 
will you allow me to mention a plan of utilising them 1 It may 
not be new to some of your readers, but I do not remember seeing 
it suggested in the Journal, while I have practised it for some years 
with considerable success. If the sucker comes from an under¬ 
ground eye in the stem there is no choice but to cut it off ; but if, 
as is mostly the case, it proceeds from one of the roots a few inches 
from the stem, 1 take a sharp spade and thrust down about half¬ 
way between the sucker and the tree. If the sucker dies there is 
no harm done, but in nine cases out of ten it will be none the 
worse for the check after a day or two. A week or so after the 
severance I use the sucker as a stock, nip out the point, and insert 
a bud level with the surface of the ground ; then in autumn I dig 
it out, carefully cut out the eyes on the stock below the inserted 
bud, and replant wherever I like. By this means I stop what 
would be an injury to my Bose trees, root-prune them, which is a 
benefit, and increase my stock almost at one operation without 
the trouble of planting Briars or of making and inserting 
cuttings, in both of which cases there is often a large per-centage 
of failures.—J. B. 
THE EFFECTS OF ELECTRICITY ON VEGETATION. 
Manures. —What constitutes a manure 1 This question is more 
easily asked than answered, for it is difficult to say what it is that 
does not act as such in one way or another. However, we may 
safely commence by dividing them first into two opposite classes 
—one acting directly as carbon food ; the other, not furnishing 
carbon, but by chemical action stimulating the plant to a more 
active appropriation and assimilation. Like stone, bricks, or 
timber for a house, carbon is the first necessity of a plant for 
building up its framework and for constituting the basis of all its 
productions. It is commonly stated that all this carbon is derived 
from the atmosphere, but such a supposition originated in bygone 
days when vegetable physiology was little understood ; yet even 
in these more enlightened times it still clings to us like any other 
bad name. It has been provided for far otherwise than that 
vegetation should be starved upon atmospheric carbonic acid gas. 
A provision exists for supplying them abundantly with carbon 
that has already undergone one or more stages of preparation, and 
thus become converted into a more suitable food. Every drop of 
water imbued with either vegetable or animal remains, from pond 
water and the boilings of vegetables up to the richest drainings 
of a farmyard manure heap, all convey more or less carbon food 
in its most acceptable form. Hence it is that green vegetables dug 
or ploughed into the land furnish by their juices au immediate 
supply of ready-prepared food, and thus constitute a rich manure. 
But then this superabundance of food would be of little or no 
avail without an additional stimulus to help its consumption ; and 
here again we have this requirement supplied by the simultaneous 
decaying of its substance. It is now a well-understood fact that 
all additions made to a plant’s growth are effected by a series of 
chemical changes. Then, on the other hand, these chemical changes 
cannot originate themselves, but are dependant upon extraneous 
agency—that is, by some other force applied either to the roots 
only, or to the roots and leaves conjointly and in adequate propor¬ 
tions. One of the most prominent and best understood of these 
resources is that of heat or warmth, and it is well known to every 
chemist that heat is a powerful agent in promoting chemical action ; 
but also this chemical action in one place may produce heat or 
may reproduce chemical action in another place, as in the battery. 
In my boyhood an apprenticeship, more than half a century back, 
to a practical and manufacturing chemist bringing me into con¬ 
tact with many phenomena at that time little understood, led to 
a closer investigation than ordinary rule-of-thumb processes were 
usually accorded ; and finding it stated by Sir Humphry Davy 
that acids combined with alkalis because they were in opposite 
states of electricity, one negative and the other positive, it was 
at once felt that herein existed a law which underlies the whole 
matter of chemical combinations, and rendered that which other¬ 
wise could not be accounted for perfectly clear and intelligible. 
Subsequently Faraday decided that the chemical affinity of one 
substance for another and ordinary electric attractions are one 
and the same thing, thus indissolubly connecting the one with 
the other, the apparent difference being only that they occur 
between opposite kinds of bodies, the former soluble, the latter 
insoluble. Thus heat may produce electrical attractions between 
the solid parts of a plant, whilst at the same time it developes 
chemical action amongst its soluble components, and converting 
liquids into solids. 
It must not, however, be deemed a reflection upon the then 
state of chemical teaching as compared with later times, since 
even within the last year or two a critic, whose name is constantly 
before the public and luxuriating in the title of F.C.S. (Fellow 
of the Chemical Society), commenting on some remarks of mine, 
made the unwitting admission “ that he was unable to see that 
electricity had anything to do with chemistry 1” This is intro¬ 
duced here only because it affords a very valuable and instructive 
lesson. Criticism coming from anyone who may not be well up 
in modern physics can hardly merit attention, and as considerable 
pains have been taken to give corroborative fact as far as possible, 
any disputed points will have to be settled between these har¬ 
monising evidences and the unsatisfied critic. 
It is thus by the reciprocal effects of these chemical actions and 
electrical attractions that the purely chemical substances deserve 
the title of manures—that is, not by any direct food to the plant, 
but by their chemical changes developing force which acts on the 
plant by induction. Dip a piece of quicklime into a solution of 
sulphate of ammonia, and it will instantaneously afford a strong 
ammoniacal effluvium. A piece of fresh-made mortar will act in 
the same way, but the older and milder the mortar the slower will 
be its action. Again, any carbonate or other salt of lime will be 
equally decomposed by the sulphuric acid composing the sulphate, 
and a sulphate of lime will be the result, the ammonia disappear¬ 
ing ; hence it is that decayed leaf mould, which derives its great 
superiority as a rich soil from the abundance of its raphides or 
oxalate of lime crystals, responds so effectually to the application 
of sulphate of ammonia to whatever plants may be growing 
therein. In this way crushed or dissolved bones become more 
active when combined with this sulphate, but then the latter 
must be in weak solution. Now, were the lime so appearing 
within the texture of plants in the same form or composition as 
when applied to the roots, there would then be some appearance 
of reason in its being supposed to be simply absorbed or taken in 
mechanically ; but such is not the case. The raphides are purely 
a vegetable combination and construction, and play a most impor¬ 
tant part in the economy of plant-formation, and one hitherto but 
little regarded. They in a great measure serve the same purpose 
as the bones and shells of animals in giving stiffness and support 
to the softer tissues ; and whilst, with but only one known ex¬ 
ception in the Welwitschia, an anomalous plant altogether, these 
lime crystals always form an internal skeleton, just as silex or 
flint occupies the external surface of straw and canes, &c., for 
the same purpose—namely, to give rigidity and strength for the 
support of a slender and delicate stem. Lime and silex are there¬ 
fore indispensable ingredients of the soil for the respective classes, 
and are not merely accidentally present in the plant as might be 
supposed, but they indicate also some special action in being 
thus dealt with. It is an indisputable fact that lime in its caustic 
state, or as lime water, is not adapted for appropriation by vege¬ 
table forms, but that it must be in combination with some other 
agent to enable it to be decomposed, and to have one of its 
elements sent one way and the other rejected or driven off in the 
opposite direction to form a balance, and this rule holds good 
with every other substance of a like kind. Now this resolves 
itself into what is commonly termed “ root action.” It is this 
electrolysing process that enables the plant to select its food. It 
is the effect of the electro-polar action taking place between the 
roots and the soil on the one hand, and between the stems and 
leaves and the atmosphere on the other. Hence, should these 
relative conditions be in an enfeebled state this decomposition 
could not be effected, and hence the caution to be exercised in 
the application of stimulating appliances. Let the plants be first 
well syringed or watered overhead until freshened, and half 
an hour afterwards such applications may be made with safety 
and benefit. Such compounds as the sulphate and urate of am¬ 
monia, nitrates of soda and potash, chloride of ammonium or 
sal-ammoniac, nitrate of ammonia, chloride of sodium or common 
table salt, &c., all act partly by the force liberated in their decom- 
osition and partly by their moisture-attracting propensities, 
eeping the surface of the soil damp, and promoting the polar 
action between the earth and its superincumbent atmosphere. 
Let any damp cold frame with a northern aspect have its floor 
sprinkled with common table salt and closely shut up for the 
night, and the probability is that on the following morning the 
whole interior will feel warm and comfortable in comparison 
with what it previously had been. 
Pour a little cold water over some fresh-burnt lime, and it will 
soon become too hot to hold. The heat here, however, is partly 
due to a decrease in bulk of the water in entering into combina¬ 
tion with the lime as well as to the chemical action, but it thus 
serves to warm cold lands. Burnt earth and fresh coal cinder 
dust, also, by entering in the same way into combination with 
water, oxygen, and carbonic acid, furnish “ force ” so as to be 
serviceable as manures, as well as benefiting the texture of the 
soil. 
Hitherto we have been putting the case as one of “food without 
appetite and of appetite without food,” but we now come to the 
