Pacific Rural Press, Volume 56, Number 6, 6 August 1898 — Electric Cabbage Culture. [ARTICLE]

Electric Cabbage Culture.

While a great number of inconsequent experiments have been made in plant growing under the influence of electric rays, there is no doubt that in America, France and Russia a good deal of investigation has been made of the effects of electricity on plant culture, which has materially enriched the general knowledge of the subject. Other countries are now taking up this study, which now bids -fair to be placed on a thoroughly scientific as well as practical basis. Prof. Lem strom of the University of Helsingfors is engaged in an attempt to determine the influence of atmospheric electricity on plant life. Prof. Bailey of Cornell University is advising with Prof. Lemstrom in this investigation, which is understood to have been suggested by the observation that in northern regions vegetation is very rapid, and this rapidity may be determined by atmospheric electricity, to which it is contended the aurora borealis is due. In England, too, Dr. E. M. Cook of the Clifton Laboratory has offered to give his services in making a number of observations from a high tower near Bristol. The land around, consisting of twenty acres, is uncultivated, and is well situated for the purpose of experiments. The proposition is to collect atmospheric electricity and to pass it into certain trial gardens in which plants shall be grown. For this purpose, instead of fitting the lightning rod of the tower with a single point, it will be shod with a crown of points. It is thought that by this method the supplies of electricity existing in the atmosphere may be tapped, and then conducted by wires into small plots of ground, where they will end in earth plates.