ANIMAL AND PLANT LIFE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 199, 23 August 1926, Page 5

ANIMAL AND PLANT LIFE.

«A SINGLE OCEAN OF BEING."

WHAT HINDU SCIENTIST SAYS

In a lecent lecture before the Royal Society of Arts in London, man's kinship with plant life was described by Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose, the Handu scientist, who was reported by cable a few days ago as declaring that plants have hearts, nerves and muscles.

"Mute companions silently growing beside our door," he declared, "tell us the tale of their life, their tremulousness and their death spasms by a script we can understand. In man at the moment of death a spasm passes through the whole body, and similarly in a plant a great contractile spasm occurs, accompanied by an electric spasm- The barriers which have separated kindred phenomena are now thrown down and plants and animals are found to be a multiple unity in a single ocean of beingOur sense of wonder is quickened, not lessened, when we realise our kinship with all that lives."

Sir Jagadis said that man's pretension as a highly sensitive being received a shock when certain plants were found to be a great deal more sensitive than the lords of creation. Although plants are virtually deaf, he said, being little affected by sound, they are much more sensitive to light than man. Plants, he stated, detect minute changes in the intensity of light that are unnoticed by the human eye. ' Still more wonderful, Sir Jagadis thought, was the wide range in a plant's perception of different octaves of visible and invisible light.

"Of the multitudinous ether waves," said the speaker, "the human retina responds to a single octave lying between red and violet- The plant not only responds to ultra-violet, but also the invisible wireless waves at the other end of the spectrum. It is not unlikly that a plant possesses a quite unsuspected sixth sense. Solution of this problem, however, requires further investigation-"

The deceptiveness of appearances Sir Jagadis illustrated by citing the famous praying palm, which prostrates itself every evening as the temple bells call the people to prayer in Faridpore, India. This tree appears, he said, while erect in the morning, like a living giant twice the height of a man, but toward evening it leans forward, bows down its head and presses its crown of t leaves in an attitude of devotion. However, there is no special sanctity attached to this performance, as the branches and leaves of all trees move up and down. unnoticed during the course of the day.

Trees are never at rest, but are in a state of constant movement in response to definite sftmula from the outside. The drooping and withering of a plant occur long after its death, Sir Jagadis said.