SUNSPOTS AND HORSE-CHESTNUTS.

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 21, 2 January 1907, Page 2

SUNSPOTS AND HORSE-CHESTNUTS.

* The French astronomer and naturalist Flammarion has recently succeeded, so he says, in establishing a relation between horse-chesnuts and sun-spots. He finds that the leaf-buds burst and tho flowers appear 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 lie built a number of little greenhouses—one of tho 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 grecriliouses he ■Sowed 50 lettuce plants, and as a result ho found that those which grew in the red light spindled up into 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 and leaves, while the tubers obtained were hardly bigger than peas. It was ascertained however, that ripe strawberries and other fruits could be kept in good condition for many days, and held back from overripening. by placing them under blue glass.