ELECTRIC STATE OF AIR. 
163 
those parts thus visited. I believe I have under¬ 
stood that the neighbourhood of Kingsbridge is 
particularly subject to such blights. On June 5th, 
1839, being four miles south-east of Kingsbridge, I 
saw in a field of grass, immense crowds of the 
brown coccinella invited out by the warmth of 
the morning. Soon after these occurrences of 1838, 
the crops of broad beans in this place were infested 
by multitudes of aphides of a sooty colour. Nowfrom 
these two facts of the coincident death of the buds 
and assault of the insects on the fruit, and of the 
prevalence of blight generally at the period just 
named, I infer that a certain electric state of the air 
was the first cause of the disaster, for, on the one 
hand we naturally attribute the sudden death of the 
shoots to electric influence, while on the other, we 
recollect how intimately associated are the phe¬ 
nomena of life and electricity, and how plausible 
it seems to attribute vivifying powers on the eggs 
of insects to an unusual proportion of electric 
matter generated in the air. For three weeksbefore 
this event, the weather had been dry and rather 
close, and upon the whole, it cannot be matter of 
surprise that I should be so willing to attach a 
blighting power to electricity in its latent form, for 
there is no doubt, that the amount of electric matter 
in a country is ever proportioned to its liability to 
clouds and wet, as greatly happens to us in this 
county. Farmers calculate that the latest time at 
which their crops of apples may be cut off, is from 
June 7th to 12th, and there is no doubt, that it is 
this same sort of blight I have here described of 
which they complain in so many years. Partial blights 
are very frequent, both as respects the district so 
affected, and as regards the apple trees themselves, 
and again, it often happens that the blight only 
affects the buds, or leaves, or fruit in a partial man¬ 
ner and renders them respectively, or conjointly 
