XXV.

FLOWERS IMPROVED BY ELECTRICITY.

"Marry nature's gifts the one with the other, amalgamate sympathetic electricities in their due proportions, and give increased beauty to loveliness, even as ye give increased strength to iron and marble, by welding their particles into one imperishable mass."

We discovered the mode in which nature operates in the production of plants and flowers, and our discovery has enabled us to give them new forms and varied colours, to increase their natural odours and to endow them even with fragrance of which in their natural state they are devoid.

Enclosed in every seed is a portion of electricity, and on this depend, in the first instance, the life of the plant, its form and colour, its leaves and blossoms. If any crack or injury to the seed has allowed the electricity to escape, the growth of the plant is prevented.

When, after some time, the seed having been sown, its electricity has attracted a sufficient quantity of the electricity of the ground, and the two electricities are, as it were, married, their united heat and power force the seed to burst.

Part of the united electricity serves for the leaves, and when its supply is deficient the leaves wither and die, despite every effort to preserve them.

Another part serves to give form and impart colour to the plant. Green is the colour that the earth, in connection with the electricity of light, has the greatest tendency to generate.

In many plants, after the electricity has thrown off its principal strength in the leaves and blossoms, what remains sinks exhausted into the root, there to repose, and, like a child forsaken by its mother, the leaves become sickly and fade. When in due season the electricity again becomes invigorated by repose, and by union with the electricity of the ground, the united essences go forth again to seek the light and busy themselves in the reproduction of foliage and flowers.

The essence of the combined electricity having acquired additional power from the contact with the electricity of light and of the sun, is forced to the extremities and joints of the stem, where the forms of the flower are permanently developed and preserved.

The electricity concentrated or, rather, coagulated at the joints and extremities of the plant there forms hard gatherings, which, after being saturated with the electricity of light and of the sun, ripen and burst into flower.

There are, as you know, great resemblances in many of the operations of nature. From observing the mode in which electricity thus coagulates and forms gatherings or tumours in flower-plants, we acquired valuable knowledge, including the secret of the formation of gatherings or tumours of all kinds in the human body.

The sap of the plant is the repository or reservoir of the united electricities, from which every part of the flower is to be nourished.

PROCESS FOR CHANGING FORM.

This is an outline of our process when we would change the form of flowers:

A slip from a plant, according to the kind of flower desired, is placed in a flower-pot filled with mould, the bottom of which can be unscrewed and removed at pleasure.

As soon as the slip has taken root, and the smallest fibres have sprung from the stem of the plant, the form of the desired flower is made out of a piece of ravine metal as thin as a piece of silk.

This metal-flower, after immersion in a solution which attracts the particular electricity to be used, is enclosed in a hollow block of the same metal, corresponding to the flower form, from which it rises in a shape somewhat like that of a funnel, till it ends in a very fine point or orifice as fine and as hollow as the finest hair. This point is inserted in the root of the plant.

Underneath the metal-flower form is placed a bag of sympathetic electricity, and the mouth of the bag is so arranged as to fit closely round the form of the metal-flower in such a way that the electricity has no escape but into the hollow metal block and through its fine, hollow point. The metal point, previously to its insertion in the root of the plant, is prepared with a solution to prevent the escape of any of the electricity through its pores.

As soon as the bag is opened the electricity is attracted into the metal form, and having no other escape, proceeds instantaneously through the funnel and through the hair-tube into the plant. In doing this, it retains the form implanted by its contact with the metal model, and by the forced passage through which it has become married with another electricity.

As soon as it is attracted by the solution with which the inside of the metal is covered, a shock is produced which materially assists the operation, by causing the electricity to imprint itself with greater force and certainty on the embryo plant with which you will recollect the hair-point has been connected.

It is essential that the charge should be sufficiently strong to modify or overpower the electricity already existing in the plant, in order to change the form which this would otherwise take; but, at the same time, care is taken that the charge is not too powerful, for in that case, and particularly if an antipathetic electricity be employed, the flower would be instantly killed. The electricity is therefore applied in gentle proportions at first, and then the operation is repeated several times.

PRODUCTION OF COLOUR.

It is electricity that, as I have said, gives colour to plants. Their varied tints depend on the sympathy or attraction of their electricity to sun and light electricities. Particular parts of the plant, from the nature of their fibre, have the power to attract larger portions than others of the colouring electricities.

When it is wished to produce different colours in the flower other electricities are used, with or without those producing variety of form. The electricities for producing colours are contained in small pouches, as many in number as the colours we desire to produce. Then, being placed together at the base of the flower-pot, each on the particular part of the "flower form" which is to be affected, their orifices are opened and the contents of each one are instantaneously emitted.

Most plants are susceptible of every variety of colour; thus are produced roses, pink, blue, green, lilac, brown, fire-colour, and sun-colour, which last is a colour so brilliant that the eye that has long gazed upon it stands in need of repose.

Amongst the electricities for giving colours is sun electricity, received in different ways. Again, the electricities of some birds give lovely colours; and so does that of the gold-fish. Moss gives a colour resembling fire-sparks. Frogs produce a beautiful violet.

Where the flowers and leaves have not a decided perfume of their own, we can give a beautiful fragrance to either, though not to both on the same plant. To produce this result, we inoculate the plant with certain fragrant gases. Our dahlias, unlike yours, yield a highly fragrant and delightful perfume.

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The plants treated by us in these ways are fitly called flowers, presenting as they do a mass of blossoms and exhaling delicious perfumes. They act, mediately or immediately, on the concentrated light of the organization through the nerves of smell, as beautiful sounds through the medium of the ear, or as beautifully harmonised colours through the eye. You will recollect that a modification of concentrated light is supposed to be the link through which the soul communicates its impressions to the brain, on whose divisions it is made to act in electric forms.

Besides an infinite variety of flowers, we produce every variety of colour and perfume in the leaves of the evergreens which adorn our streets and habitations, emitting healthy and refreshing fragrance, increased by every movement of the wind.

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CREATION OF FORMS.

Not wholly unconnected with this subject is the creation of electric forms for amusement at a distance from the operator. This is effected by the aid of tubes made from the membranes covering the eyes of birds, which are invisible to the naked eye even when at a short distance from the observer.

In the mouth of one of these tubes, which spreads out slightly, is placed a small form made of grains of powder obtained from the coloured seeds of flowers, and, a bag of electricity being applied, the fluid rushes through the tube. Instantly, at the other end, appears the figure or form traced at the mouth, but of ordinary or gigantic stature, proportioned to the power or quantity of electricity employed.

The forms can be varied or changed at will, and have so life-like an appearance that I have seen persons go up to the supposed gentlemen or ladies and speak to them, and only discover that they were shadows when they have come up close to them, or when the operator has at will made them vanish.

I should tell you how our attention was first called to the subject of reproducing forms by electricity.

We had observed numberless instances in which copies of forms were reproduced by electricity, as in the case of pictures in water, reflections in mirrors, mirages, apparitions, and pictures in the air; and had noticed that lightning would frequently imprint, on substances like trees, pictures of surrounding objects. These appearances have, I believe, been observed even in your world.

SUN-FORCING.

There is a highly beautiful flower called Luania, a name of which the approximate translation is the soiree or "assembly" flower. Its colours are most brilliant, but its blossom only lasts about ten hours. When that short term has expired, the leaves fall, and nothing remains but a small pod, containing seeds.

In the following year, but not before, the flower blossoms again, and falls in like manner.

The seeds of the Luania do not mature for three years,—that is to say, until after the flower has blossomed three times; but we have, however, the means of producing flowers from the seeds in three days.

The seeds are placed in handsome vases, which contain fine sand and some new goat's-milk, and are covered over with perforated zinc, taken from the great ravine, the metal having been previously prepared to attract the rays of the sun.

The vase, with the metal thus prepared, is exposed to the light of the sun, between the hours of seven and eight in the morning.

The power of the prepared metal is great, and so strongly attracts and retains heat, that it renders the surrounding atmosphere quite cold.

One hour in the sun is sufficient to bring leaves from the Luania. The metal covering is then removed, and the vases are placed under a forcing-glass, the power of which is doubled on the second day, and further increased on the third. The flowers then appear at once clad in all their brilliancy and beauty.

The forced flowers, like the natural blossoms, which they excel in beauty, live ten hours only, but they so far differ from them that their pods do not contain seeds.

The colours of the flowers are bright pink, golden, lilac, lilac striped with white, and a beautiful green striped with white gold. The leaves of this, instead of being green like the others, are of a coral colour mixed with purple blue.

The perfume of these flowers surpasses every other fragrance; it is most refreshing, and a lady will have no other for a reunion when she can obtain this flower.