LIGHT AND GROWTH.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9093, 20 May 1908, Page 4

LIGHT AND GROWTH.

A well-known French scientist, by setting up little greenhouses each fronted with glass of a different colour, and recording the rates oc growth of the plants inside, has found that development in all kinds of plants was stimulated very greatly by red light, while they grew more

slowy under green. Mr Beach Thomas who writes on the subject in the London "Daily Mail," points out that brewers have found that barley sprouts best when the room is tinted blue. Many seeds grow much faster at first in darkness, and red, as the photographer knows, has in some cases much the same effect as darkness. The green substance of the plant, however, can only be produced in light. "Tlie thing to do, then, is to find a certain sort of ray of light which shall have the effect of darkness in promoting growth, and yet have a qualify which shall permit the making of the green life blood of plants, which we are told to call chlorophyll. M. Julien Loisel seems to have found it in red. This colour, also, it is discovered, makes some j plants more true to their distinctive character, the sensitive plant more sensitive, the leafy plant more leafy." Though the prize-winner of the future may havj to be a man of science, even the humblest gardener can repeat M. Loisel's experiments, and perhaps extend them. Herein lies the great charm of the discovery of the effect of coloured light on growth; we cannot all be experimenters in electrifying the soil and producing strawberries before their time, but we can all rear plants behind panes of coloured glass and note the ■ effect. Mr Thomas declares that science, if the world only appreciated • it, is on the side of the "small man," because the best results can unly be got by close personal attention. Every man with a small garden should be an experimenter.