100 YEARS AGO

The results obtained by culture under the influence of electric light are fairly well known, and the growing of lettuce for salads, in spacious greenhouses with the aid of electric light, is already a profitable industrial pursuit in the United States. However, the use of electric currents for stimulating vegetation, although it was studied more than fifty years ago, still remains unsettled. A communication upon this subject contains some welcome information upon the work done in this direction in Russia. … V. A. Tyurin ascertained that electrified seeds germinated more rapidly, and gave better fruit and better crops (from two and a half to six times higher) than seeds that had not been submitted to preliminary electrification. He also found that potatoes and roots grown in the electrified space gave crops three times heavier than those grown close by on a test plot; the carrots attained a size of from ten to twelve inches in diameter.

From Nature 19 April 1900.

50 YEARS AGO

During the centenary year of the death of William Wordsworth at Grasmere in Westmorland on April 23, 1850, slightly more than eighty years after his birth at Cockermouth in Cumberland, the poet's message and outlook upon life and Nature will be reviewed from many angles, and so it seems fitting that his work should be considered also in relation to scenic influences, especially from the regional or geographic point of view. This, indeed, is particularly called for in the case of one occupying a unique place in English literature as a mystical lover of Nature and identified with a most distinctive and beautiful part of England — the Lakes. Wordsworth's very position as the local interpreter of Lakeland is much enhanced by the fact he was yet no mere local figure. Apart from the universality of his theme, he travelled extensively over the British Isles and the Continent, so that a wide and varied geographical range is reflected in the poetry. Every one of his biographers has either stated or implied that to know Wordsworth is to understand the Lakes, and to understand the Lakes is to realize that this, on its own small scale, is a true mountain land — a fact which those who rush through the district in cars and never explore its inmost recesses can easily miss.

From Nature 22 April 1950.