The Popular Science Monthly, September, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
The Popular Science Monthly, September, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
attained extraordinary development, red light acting like a manure.
While those under blue glass became insensitive, under red glass the
sensitive plants had become excessively sensitive to the least breath.
They also flowered, those under transparent glass being vigorous and
showing buds, but not flowering. The foliage under red glass was
very light, under blue darkest. Similar but less marked effects were
found in the case of geraniums, strawberries, etc. The strawberries
under blue glass were no more advanced in October than in May; though
not growing old their life was little more than a sleep. It appears,
however, that the stimulating influence of red light fails to influence
favorably the ripening of fruit. Zacharewiez, professor of agriculture
at Vaucluse, has found that red, or rather orange, produces the
greatest amount of vegetation, while as regards fruit, the finest and
earliest was grown under clear glass, violet glass, indeed, causing the
amount of fruit to increase but at the expense of the quality.
Moreover, the lowest as well as the highest plants participated in this
response to the red rays, and in even a more marked degree, for they
perish altogether under the influence of the violet rays. Marshall Ward
and others have shown that the blue, violet and ultra-violet rays, but
no others, are deleterious to bacteria. Finsen has successfully made
use of this fact in the treatment of bacterial skin diseases. Reynolds
Green has shown that while the ultra-violet rays have a destructive
influence on diastase, the red rays have a powerfully stimulating
effect, increasing diastase and converting zymogen into diastase.
While the influence of the red rays on the plant is thus so enormous
and easily demonstrated, the physical effects of red on animals seem
to be even opposite in character, although results of experiments are
somewhat contradictory. Béclard found that the larvæ of the flesh fly
raised under violet glass were three fourths larger than those raised
under green glass; the order was violet, blue, red, yellow, white,
green. In the case of tadpoles, Yung found that violet or blue was
especially favorable to the growth of frogs; he also found that fish
hatch most rapidly under violet light. Thus the influence that is
practically death to plants is that most favorable to life in animals.
Both effects, however, as Davenport truly remarks in his ‘Experimental
Morphology,’ when summing up the results of investigations, are due to
the same chemical metabolic changes, but while plants succumb to the
influence of the violet rays, animals, being more highly organized, are
able to take advantage of them and flourish.
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