SECRETS OF PLANT LIFE

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 288, 31 August 1929, Page 29

SECRETS OF PLANT LIFE

SIR JAGADIS BOSE’S DISCOVERIES

For Just over as hour recently in a small room in the India Office, a crouded audience of scientists and politicians, Indians yand Englishmen, listened to. a lecture demonstration by Sir Jagadis Bose on the life of plants. It was a happy illustration of the words In which Sir Jagadis characterised London as the meeting-place, not only of c-onomic but also of the intellectual commerce of the world, a place whither India could bring the scicniifie work it has achieved. With Captain Wedgwood-Benn, the Secretary of State for India, we ail felt we were listening, not only to one of the great intellects of the world,, but also to eno in whose work the spirit of practical sacrifice was manifested. Ilan heard little and saw less, Sir Jagadis reminded us, of the immediate ■voices and movements of life, but he was not deterred by the weakness of his senses. He set to work in ways which were demonstrated later to extend the ordinary organs and jierceptious. AC first no two forms of life seemed so different as animals and plants. When struck, an animal gave a little start; a plant apparently did not, and so people came to think of two streams of life flowing side by side with nothing in common between them, a conception which had been one of the greatest hindrances to the spread of knowledge. His experiments showed, however, that there was a unity of all life, and therefore as a corollary' that unity of all human efforts which was one of the great binding forces of society. .

There was no conflict between man’s spiritual aspirations and his desire for knowledge, for the highest knowledge was itself religion. “The house of knowledge,” he- said, “is not a mere laboratory but a temple.” For this reason he had called a part of bis institute in Calcutta “The Temple of Science,” and thither people came from all over India to offer white flowers in token of the purity of the work that was carried on there. The invention of the microscope which magnified two thousand times had revolutionised biological science, but what was that to his apparatus which magnified fifty million times and had opened a whole new new world of thrilling possibilities?

His problem was to make the plant write down its own stqry. A plant might be compared to an unconscious man, who could not-speak but who was yet alive. If touched his answering touches showed just how much alive he was. Faraday, by wearing a small magnet in front of a coil prouced an electric spark. “What good is it?” asked the then Chancellor ;of the Exchequer. “Some day you will be able to . tax that- spark,” was ■ Faraday’s answer. His own researches were in rather a similar position to Faraday’s, fbj though the whole world’s food supply depended on the growth of plants, we knew practically nothing about that growth because of its very slow. rate. One waited three days and saw something, another three days and could trace development, but all the other conditions of temperature and sun and rain had changed completely in the meantime. It was necessary to construct, as he had done, apparatus, the accuracy of which had been vouched for by such men as Sir William Bragg and Sir William Bayliss, which would

reveal the processes of life over a period of two minutes. After this preface, Sir Jagadis Bose went on to show us some of his experiments and lantern slides illustrating the results of others. One diagram showing in a curve the heart beats of a plan revealed a sudden feebleness. He had been puzzled as to the cause of this until he discovered that a small cloud had passed over the sun. unnoticed by him but fully appreciated by the plant. Another’diagram which be commended to the attention of Mr. Snowden showed the effect of alcohol on a plant as a sudden, erratic, and feeble turn of the curve.

Yet another diagram traced for us the time which it takes a plant to feel an electric shock. For a moment there is no change; it is not until a seven-hundredth part of a second has passed that the effect of the shock is visible. This was the time it took a healthy plant to react, but when a plant had become jaded by several experiments it took much longer to respond, while eventually it had to be given half an hour’s rest. A small stimulus increased growth, a larger one was harmful. Each plant had a critical point, which remained for other workers to establish. This importance Of dosage was pot properly realised by electrical culture syndicates. some of which reported that the yield of crops was increased and some that it was decreased by the application of electricity. . To show how sensitive plants really are Sir Jagadis -Bose then subjected the Secretary of State for India and a plant to the same experiment. A weak electric show was administered to both. Captain Benn reported that be hardly felt it, but the plant, speaking through an ingenious arrangement of pulleys and mirrors, gave a distinct shudder. Captain Wedgwood Been was then removed and the strength of the current increased so that we might be privileged to see the death agony of an inoffensive lupin. • Another experiment showed us the heartlike mechanism of plants. The old theory was that the leaf transpired.- a vocuum was created, and sap sucked up. To disprove this, a drooping leaf was coated with vaseline to make transpiration impossible and given a cardiac stimulant.. In a very short, time’ the leaf revived, but a similar leaf which had been given a dose of, formaldehyde could not be revived. ' Sap then is propelled by a pulsation like that of the human heart, or rather like that of an earthworm’s heart.

In conclusion, we were told how the possibility of u new pharmacopoeia was being brought into existence by experiments on plants at Vienna before the Faculty of Medicine. A frog whose, heart had stopped beating was revived by, a potent Indian drug whose power had been tested first on plants. Plants, Sir Jagadis reminded us, had the special value of excluding the psychical factor suggestion. The factor of auto-suggestion which the . modern doctor exercised on the minds of bis patients could only be eliminated by first experimenting on the plant, which was devoid of -imagination.; By the discovery of many new drugs, Sir Jagadis and his fellow-workers had opened out a new field in which mediums could .work. for. the alleviation of the ills of humanity.