Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1876 — Vegetation and Health. [ARTICLE]

Vegetation and Health.

Our instinct leads us to delight in flowers. Their beauty and perfume have irresistible attractions for us. We have little dreamed that we were thus led to surround ourselves with objects which most powerfully conduce to health. No doubt there are certain members of the vegetable kingdom which are exceedingly deleterious; for, not to speak of the much dreaded upas, the West Indian manchineel, and some species of the American rhus, there are some of our common sweetscented flowers, such as the mezereon, which have very injurious properties. But recent investigation has proved that those adornments of our gardens for the presence of which we so crave, are, as a rule, endowed with health-preserving qualities. Oxygen, when highly electrified, and so rendered especially vitalizing, has in recent times been distinguished by the name of ozone. This is one of the chief elements of a healthy atmosphere. Now, centuries ago it was known that certain plants acted as powerful disinfectants. Thus Herodi&n tells us that, when in the second century the plague raged in Italy, the physicians recommended those who crowded into Rome to go to Laurentum, because there the sweet-bay tree (iMurue nobilie) grew in great abundance, and the inhalation of air impregnated with its odors was a strong preservative against infection. And the disciples of Empedocles were wont to grow aromatic and balsamic herbs around their dwellings, from the belief that they were thu»guarding themselves against fevers, agues and such like, lias not, too, among us the tradition of its fever-dispelling power given the uame of feverfew to one of the strongest scented ofthe composite? Recent investigations, especially those of Prof. Montegazza, of Pagna, and Dr. Cornelius fox, have shown that these old ideas wero based on scientific truth. It is now woeUained tliat the quality of ozone

ia materially Increased by the exposure to the rays of the sun of various plants, among which the most common are the lavender, musk, cherry, laurel, clove, fennel, narcissus, heliotrope, hyacinth and mignonette. It i> interesting to know that the sunflower, which will grow almost anywhere, and can be turned to various useful purposes, Is one of the most valuable of sanitary agents, since not only is it ozoniparous, but also destroys deleterious miasmata. It should be noted as further proot of the good influence of plant-cul-turo on health, that, while the manufacture of ozone ia an independent work carried on by the flowers alone, the green leaves are performing their sanitary function by extracting carbonic-acid gas from the atmosphare, and hslpiog to reserve tiiat portion in its elements which tend to make it healthful. More remarkable, perhaps, than all is the eucalyptus, ot which we have recently heard so much, and of which we shall soon know rnoro. Thus the cultivation es flowers is a work not merely delightful and humanizing in itself, but one which, in a way most beau tiful and picturesque, confers a positive benefit on society, so great that it can hardly be overrated, especially in largo towns, where there must necessarily be so much to poison and deteriorate the air we breathe. —Bnglith Gardener’t Magazine.