PUTTING TREES TO SLEEP AND WATCHING PLANTS GROW.

Otago Witness, Issue 3470, 14 September 1920, Page 51

PUTTING TREES TO SLEEP AND WATCHING PLANTS GROW.

Drugged into unconsciousness, a tree may be transplanted without pain, arid when it wakes up a very curious result is observed. The seemingly fanciful tale comes from a great Indian botanist, Sir Jagadis Chandra 13ose, who is on the most intimate terms with plants, and has even invented a "crescograph" by which their growth may actually be seen. We read that he has devoted much time to the study of sense in vegetables and minerals, and he has come to the conclusion that sensitiveness runs through the entire range of metals and plants just as it does through the animal kingdom. Even _ a metal has its moods, he says; it has its ups and downs. It can be stimulated or depressed; it can be killed by poison. And as for trees, they can be anesthetised like human beings. Mr Arthur Mee, in a London paper, gives the following particulars :

Professor Bose has proved that practically any tree or shrub, if put to sleep by a stupefying drug, can be safely dug up, carried away, and replanted. After being secured in its new position the tree slowly wakes up, and a strange thing happens. Most trees hibernate —they go to sleep in winter like bats, hedgehogs, frogs, and toads. Before doing so they shed their leaves. Now, when a tree has been artificially put to sleep with drugs, it seems to realise that, something untoward and unnatural has happened, and it sheds its leaves in summer instead of in _ the autumn. This happens only after it is drugged into unconsciousness, and does not become a habit for the effect of the strange experience passes and the tree returns to its former habit.

That is altogether a most wonderful thing, revealing an unsuspected similarity between plant and animal processes.' Sir Jagadis Bose has found that the tissues of plants pulsate like the heart of animals. He can stimulate a dying plant -into renewed life, can send" it to sleep, or can put it to death. As the living plant has the equivalent of an animal heart-beat, as it responds to stimulants, dies under poisons, sleeps under drugs, so, in its last struggle for life, it experiences a deathspasm like any of the higher animals. The idea of'Dr.Bose's crescograph, the invention by which we are able to see plants grow, is very simple. A leaf or sprig is attached by a waxed thread to a long magnetic needle, which is so delicately balanced that without the restraint of the thread the end would'fall. Opposite -the other end of the needle are two small upright magnets, and any movement of the needle will cause the magnets to rotate. At the back of the magnets is a small mirror, on to which a spot oi light is thrown, and this is reflected on to a screen through a lens.like that of a magic lantern. Now, when the plant grows the end of the needle falls. The movement is so slight that it would not be perceptible through the most powerful microscope, but it is enough to make the little magnets swing, so moving a mirror on the back of ■'them. .Thus, as we watch the screen, we see a little spot of light travel to and fro across it, and that moving spot of life is the plant growing! has happened is that our perception of movement has been magnified a hundred million times beyond the power of any microscope. This invention mav affect every one of us, and it may be that our breakfast table will bear witness to it -within a year or two. For now the agriculturist has a certain means of finding out the best methods of food production. To try the effect of a certain manure on corn, for instance, he will not need to wait a whole season, but can put the corn in this magnifying apparatus, add the manure, and the spot of light on the screen will tell him exactly the effect the manure is having on the plant. Sir Jagadis has found out already, by means of Us apparatus, that what were considered deadly poisons for plants are, if given in tiny doses, excellent tonics. Is it not possible that, as a result of experiments with this wonderful apparatus, we may have three harvests a year instead of one and he able to grow food on what has hitherto been barren land? Never did a wizard produce such wonder from his caldron as Dr Bose froip, his laboratory. He has been for years among the greatest men of India.