JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
546 
[ December 16, 1880. 
and those who grow them in pots will now be preparing the com¬ 
post in which to repot them next month. There is no doubt that 
the Fancy varieties are meeting with much favour, and are now 
equalling in shape the Show varieties. 
Gladioluses. —It is only necessary now to look over the corms 
occasionally and to see that they are not damp. Now is the best 
time for procuring new varieties or adding to the stock. Mr. 
Kelway’s list contains some tempting novelties, and the French 
growers have considerably reduced the prices of their roots, so 
that there is an ample field from whence to choose. If the ground 
has not been already prepared for next year’s beds it should be 
done so at once. Good trenching is the best way to treat it, but 
in all soils this is not necessary, and where it is done care must 
be exercised as to the subsoil; if that is not good it should not 
be thrown up to the surface. 
Ranunculuses. —Little is now required except to look over 
them occasionally to see that there is no damp amongst them ; 
from which they are very liable to sustain injury, and I very 
.nearly lost my collection by its being forgotten during my absence 
from home. 
Dahlias. —Here again damp is the enemy to be guarded 
against, especially as the autumn was so wet for lifting the roots ; 
but if kept in dry sand there is little danger, still they require 
looking over carefully now and then.— Florist. 
THE EFFECTS OF ELECTRICITY ON VEGETATION. 
It has been stated (page 355) that, on immersing a small seed¬ 
ling plant for a few seconds in dilute magenta dye it will become 
only partially stained ; that the root will have imbibed the colour, 
whilst the stem and leaves will have rejected it, the coloured 
part forming an abrupt division across the junction of the one 
with the other at the neck or collar just above the surface of the 
soil. Now, whether the dye has only penetrated the part retain¬ 
ing the colour, or whether it has permeated the entire structure, 
but meeting with some bleaching agent in the stem and leaves 
has been deprived of its colour, these are immaterial points in 
regard to the present purpose ; the object being to show that the 
contents of the stem and of the roots differ in their chemical 
composition, and that the change is effected at the collar adjoin¬ 
ing the earth’s surface. Take a fresh-stained plant, and after 
rinsing in clear water place it on a piece of glass, and having 
drained it add a drop of dilute sulphuric acid, when the colour 
will instantly disappear. In all bleaching agents, either by the 
dew and moisture upon grass, by the peroxide of hydrogen, the 
chlorides of lime and soda, or the sulphur acids, &c., oxygen is 
the acting principle. To demonstrate this oxygenated condition 
procure a piece of blue litmus test paper (to be had of almost any 
chemist in 2d. or 3 d. books), and cutting a slice or section from 
any succulent stem, press the cut surface on to the paper, and the 
latter will become instantaneously reddened, showing the presence 
of an acid or oxygenated fluid. There is thus in the plant a two¬ 
fold or polar arrangement identical with that of the copper wire as 
shown on page 355, attracting oxygen at one end and rejecting it 
at the other, which constitutes the first or initiating stage in "the 
construction of a battery, we may fairly infer that a corresponding 
office is fulfilled in the plant. It has often of late, from the many 
different electrical phenomena developed in organic life, been 
surmised that animals and plants, &c., must have some sort of a 
battery arrangement; yet, for want of this commencement not 
having been detected, the precise nature of such natural batteries 
has hitherto been a sealed book. 
A galvanic battery consists essentially of two different metals, 
or other substances, of which it is indispensable that one should 
possess a greater affinity for oxygen, and consequently be more 
readily dissolved than the other. For this reason and for its 
cheapness it is that zinc is generally used, and from which, by its 
solution in the acid, the electric force is developed, the amount of 
force resulting being always in proportion to the quantity of 
metal consumed. By joining a plate of copper at the top of the 
zinc aud bending it down into the acid parallel with the latter, 
and at a short distance apart, the oxidation and solution which 
took place at the neck (see fig. (14, page 355) is now transferred 
to the whole surface of the zinc immersed ; the second or copper 
plate serving only to act as a conductor, collecting the force 
developed, and putting it in communication at the opposite ends 
so as to form a connected circuit. Let the upper ends be now 
divided at their junction with each other, and be connected by 
the insertion of some moist conducting substance capable of 
being decomposed, and there will then be precisely the same 
amount of chemical decomposing force exerted between the upper 
ends as has been developed in the battery below. The idea has 
hitherto been that the force obtained from the zinc has made its 
way through the acid to the copper, and then travelled upwards 
and back to the zinc at the other end, forming a constantly cir¬ 
culating passage of the electricity from one metal to the other. 
In deference to these views the lower half of the metals in the 
acid are termed poles, whilst the upper ends were named by 
Faraday “ electrodes,” from two Greek words— electron, electricity, 
and odos, a way, meaning the way the electricity passes ; but 
more modern views, however, show the matter in a far more 
consistent light. 
It is an unvarying rule that it is not possible to develope one 
of the two electric states without at the same time producing an 
equal amount of the other. Hence on the poles in the acid be¬ 
coming electrically charged by the chemical action taking place, 
the electrodes, or opposite ends of the metals in the air, are induc¬ 
tively charged at the same instant, each with the respective com¬ 
plementary or opposite condition ; so that, instead of its being a 
transference of force from one part to another, it is, in fact, its 
equivalent, being brought into existence simultaneously at another 
locality. The preceding distinction may seem to be a very trivial 
matter and scarcely worth the trouble of insisting upon, but in 
reality it is far otherwise ; for whilst with the circulation theory 
it is wholly impossible to explain many of the phenomena of 
organic life, yet, on the other hand, by the induction principle we 
are furnished with a clue which at once leads us to their full and 
clear interpretation. 
To return to the seedling plant. It will now be seen that 
whatever amount of chemical action may be excited by light and 
sunshine in the seedling leaves, a corresponding amount will be 
induced at the opposite end—namely, in the root. But there is 
also another effect now coming into play. The axillary bud, par¬ 
taking of the influence, is thus forced into action ; the central 
stem elongates, and its crowning tuft of embryo leaves becomes 
stimulated into growth. Let some small thickish leaf, such as 
that of Begonia fuchsioides, be cut in two, and the lower edge of 
the upper part be placed for a minute or two in the dilute magenta 
dye with the point upwards, and then, on being taken and rinsed 
and examined with a pocket lens, it will be found that the leaf is 
composed of two different layers—the upper green one retaining 
its natural colour, but the under surface receiving the stain the 
same as the roots ; different species of leaves showing different 
arrangement of these opposite conditions. Take a cutting from 
a scarlet Geranium in active growth, and having inserted the cut 
end in a wineglass of the diluted dye, set it in tbe sunshine for a 
few hours, more or less according to the time of year, &c., and it 
will be found that the stain will have been drawn up through 
certain parts of the stem and along the centre of the leafstalk into 
all the ramifications of the ribs and veins occupying the under 
side of the leaf. Should there happen to be an axillary bud 
present, a section through this will show that every embryo leaf 
will also have received its partial colouring in the same way. 
That this absorption of the stain is due to the expanded portion of 
the leaf may be proved in the following manner. Let the cutting 
consist of net less than three fair-sized leaves, and from which 
cut off the middle one, leaving the stalk still attached with an 
entire leaf both above and below it. It will now be found, after 
the stain shall have penetrated the upper leaf, that the decapitated 
stalk will have been passed by without any of the stain having 
entered it, and of course any axillary buds would be thus shut 
out of the circuit in like manner. A good illustration of this fact 
has recently occurred. A plant of Abutilon having two axillary 
flower buds almost ready to expand had its leaf removed, when 
the buds, ceasing to grow, shrivelled up and dropped off. 
It will hence be understood how it arises that an “ eye ” or 
axillary bud is capable of being developed into a separate plant. 
It contains an entire polar arrangement of leaves and root cells, 
which, by the chemical action of the primary leaf, are forced by 
the inductive power into corresponding growth. Now, an entire 
plant consists of as many separate individuals as it possesses 
leaves and leaf buds, but which, by being thus massed together, 
multiply the force for the general purpose of the community. Let 
a steel magnet be broken in two, and each part will yet have its 
own north and south pole; or if it be crushed into hundreds, or 
even thousands, of pieces each fragment, however minute, will still 
possess its polar arrangement. Let a quantity of these broken 
portions, or even a handful of small iron nails or iron filings, be 
dipped into with the end of a magnet and they will attach them¬ 
selves in strings and clumps by their alternate poles, and may be 
moulded by the hands into almost any form or shape. In this 
same manner are plants built up of innumerable minute polar bodies 
termed “cells,” which, by their individual growth and division 
or multiplication, effect the increase in the general bulk of the 
structure. Thus, although each leaf and bud constitutes of itself 
