Abstract
SOME thirty years ago Prof. Lemstrom, of the University of Helsingfors, sought to elucidate the Aurora Borealis by trying to imitate its appearance by electrical experiments. For this purpose he produced high-tension discharges of various kinds, and sent them through vacuum tubes until he got an appearance very like those of the northern lights. Some of these experiments he conducted in his greenhouse—to the best of my belief, according to his own account, given when on a visit to England—and he noticed incidentally that the plants seemed to thrive under the treatment, and that the electrification thus produced in their neighbourhood appeared to do them good. He also noticed, as remarkable, the flourishing development of plants in Arctic regions, where the sunlight was very weak, and he attributed part of this growth to the influence of electric discharges.
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LODGE, O. Electricity in Agriculture . Nature 78, 331–332 (1908). https://doi.org/10.1038/078331a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/078331a0
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