The life of George Stephenson, railway engineer - Lighthouse ...

CHAP. XXXIV.] HIS THEORY OF VEGETATION. 417
mih the duke,—though this was not until shortly after his death,
when the plants had become more fully grown. His grapes also
recently took the first prize at Eotherham, at a competition open
to all England. He was extremely successful in producing
melons, having invented a method of suspending them in baskets
of wire gauze, which, by relieving the stalk from tension, allowed
nutrition to proceed more freely, and better enabled the fruit to
grow and ripen. Amongst his other erections, he built a joiner's
shop, where he kept a workman regularly employed in carrying
out his many ingenious contrivances of this sort.
He took much pride also in his growth of cucumbers. He
raised them very fine and large, but he could not make them
grow straight. Place them as he would, notwithstanding all his
propping of them, and humouring them by modifying the applica-
tion of heat and the admission of light for the purpose of effect-
ing his object, they would still insist on growing crooked in their
own way. At last he had a number of glass cylinders made at
Newcastle, for the purpose of an experiment ; into these the
growing cucumbers were inserted, and then he succeeded in grow-
ing them perfectly straight. Carrying one of the new products
into his house one day, and exhibiting it to a party of visitors,
he told them of the expedient he had adopted, and added glee-
"
fully, " I think I have bothered them noo !
Mr. Stephenson also carried on farming operations with some
success. He experimented on manure, and fed cattle after meth-
ods of his own. He was very particular as to breed and build
in stock-breeding. "You see, sir," he said to one gentleman, "I
like to see the coo's back at a gradient something like this
(drawing an imaginary line with his hand), " and then the ribs
or girders will carry more flesh than if they were so, or so."
When he attended the county agricultural meetings, which he
frequently did, he was accustomed to take part in the discussions,
and he brought the same vigorous practical mind to bear upon
questions of tillage, drainage, and farm economy, which he had
been accustomed to exercise on mechanical and engineering
matters. At one of the meetings of the North Derbyshire Agri-
cultural Society, he favoured the apsembled farmers with an
explanation of his tiieory of vegelalion. The practical conclu-
18*
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