SUNSPOTS AND HORSE-CHESTNUTS.

Lake County Press, Issue 2137, 27 September 1906, Page 7

SUNSPOTS AND HORSE-CHESTNUTS.

The French astronomer and naturalist Flammarion has recently succeeded, so he says, in establishing a relation between horse-chesnnts and sun-spots. He finds that the leaf-buds burst and the (lowers appeal- on the horse-chesnut trees earlier when the spots are largest. Flammarion is trying incidentally to find out which of the suns rays really do the work of growing our fruits for us. To this end he built a number of little greenb nises—one of the ordinary kind, another covered with red glass, yet another of blue glass, and so on. representing the various hues of the solar spectrum. In each of these greenhouses Insowed ~>o lettuce plants, and as a result lie found that those which grew in the red light spindled up int< the air. while those in the blue light hardly developed at. all. It was much the same way with other vegetables, and potatoes planted in the red house running to stalks a.id leaves, while the tubers obtained were hardly bigger than peas. It, was ascertained however, that ripe strawberries and other fruits could be kept ill good condition for many days, and held back from overripening, by placing them under-blue glass.