Paget Higgs

“ That trees withdraw, for their own profit, electricity from the atmosphere, and insulate, as completely as a metallic cage, the plants they cover. Insulation produced by a high tree can extend to the extreme limits of its foliage. A plant withdrawn from the influence of atmospheric electricity is subject to marked retardation in its development, so that the quantity of living substance in insulated vegetation is from thirty to fifty per cent, less than the production in free air. ”

“ Flowering and fruit-bearing are subject equally to modification. Electricity does not appear to favor the direct combination of the nitrogen of the air with oxygen, nor with the hydrocarbons of the soil; but it exercises a remarkable influence on the nitrification of the nitrogenized matters of the soil by the intervention of the plant as an electrical conductor. Atmospheric electricity is, therefore, a preponderating factor in vegetable production. ”

“ The practical application of electricity to the hastening of the development of vegetation is easy. Above the plants or among them may be placed a number of metallic points on a framework insulated from the earth. Wires carried by small balloons—India rubber or collodion bladders filled with gas—to a considerable elevation would collect sufficient of the electricity of the atmosphere, which would be imparted to the points, and these would discharge slowly to the earth, saturating the atmosphere in the neighborhood of the plants. ”