CHAPTER LXXX. APPLICATIONS OF ELECTRICITY TO BY FREDERICK L. RAWSON, Managing Director of Woodhouse and Rawson United, Limited; Member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers; Member of the Society of Engineers; Associate Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. THE present applications of electricity to purposes of agriculture consist more in the uses to which it has been put as a means of transmitting motive power, than in any direct application of electricity, either to plants or to the ground itself. There are agriculturalists who have conducted careful experimental trials, and who firmly believe that in the near future the direct use of electricity as an aid to growth will be very largely extended, while others consider the experiments which have as yet been made do not prove it to be useful in any way. Where judges disagree, it is difficult to form a definite opinion. The methods which have been tried, by which electricity may aid or hasten vegetation, are these: First.-Exposing plants to the direct action of the arc light, with a view of hastening growth, using the rays from the lamp during the night-time, in addition to exposing the plants to the sunlight during the day. Second.-Burying plates of zinc and copper in the earth, joining them by a wire externally, and growing plants in the intervening space, thus exposing the latter to the action of a weak constant electric current. Third.--Covering the plants with a network of wires insulated from the ground, and charging the network with a high pressure current obtained from a frictional machine, thus placing the plants in a constant electrified atmosphere. Sir William Siemens in England, Mons. Specnew in Russia, Mons. Barat in France, and Messrs. Rawson and Bailey of Cornell University in America, have spent much time in trying various modifications of these methods. Judging from the results they have obtained, it would seem to be quite feasible to hasten maturity by keeping plants constantly exposed to the rays of an arc lamp, but in most cases this is done at the expense of the quality of the fruit or produce of the plant. If plants are exposed to the rays of a powerful electric lamp during the night, and then covered up and kept in the dark during the day, it will be noticed that the growth of the plant is enfeebled, and instead of the green, healthy appearance we are wont to associate with growing plants, we obtain lean, lank and sicklylooking foliage, which plainly shows the unsuitability of the use of the electric light alone. A curious point, noticed by Sir William Siemens, was the fact that the rays from a naked arc lamp withered the leaves of the plant. Beneficial results may possibly follow its use when the rays pass through glass before reaching it. In some experiments carried out quite recently at Cornell University in America, these results were confirmed, and the conclusion arrived at was, that the rays from an arc lamp will force the growth of many different kinds of plants, but at the cost of impairing their vitality. Mons. Specnew, in Russia, has carried on experiments |
