A BEAUTIFUL EXPERIMENT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 193, 8 December 1876, Page 14

A BEAUTIFUL EXPERIMENT.

A French horticulturist, to study the physiology of the vegetable kingdom, conceived that the smallness of certain plants — the violet, for example — was owing to an atmospheric pressure too great for its delicate organs. Having carefully resolved this idea into form, he determined to test the correctness of it by some satisfactory experiment. After not a little calculation he at last hit upon the possible and probably only means by which he might illustrat* his new theory. He prepared a small baloon of as light material as was consistent with the necessary quality of durability, ■and this he made perfectly tight so as to prevent the escape of any gas with which he filled it. To this he attached a strong silken cord, 1200 metres long, or say 4090 feet. Attached to the baloon, in place of a basket, was a pot of earth, in which were planted P&rma violets, just springing from the root. The result has been wonderful. In the thin air which the delicate violets breathed at that height — for flowers do breathe in their own delicate way — they throve marvellously, the blossoms enlarging to five times the size attained at the earth's surface. This beautiful experiment, after about two months of judicious trial, rewarded the ingenious and scientific horticulturist by presenting him with violets as large as Bengal roses, something probably never before seen on earth.