For in early days Mr. Romanes had attached, so it seemed to some of those who knew him best, an undue importance to intellect, to cleverness, to intelligence, and the same person to whom he said the few words just quoted had often discussed with him the relative value of goodness and of intellect.
By goodness is meant perfect and complete goodness, not such as that of which it has been said, 'It is the business of the wise to rectify the mistakes of the good.'
And as weeks passed on he would often plan a country house and a life in which 'good works' were to have a share.
He had always had a high ideal of what Love and Faith should bring about, and in the last months of his life he said to one whom he dearly loved, 'Darling, if you believe what you say you believe, why should you mind so much?' With absolute resignation he gave up all his ambitions, the old longing for distinction, for greater fame, and yet he did not lose for one moment the old interest in his scientific work.
Two papers of his were read at the Royal Society in October 1892. The first described experiments undertaken by Mr. Romanes, the primary object of which was to ascertain whether seeds which had been kept out of contact with air for a lengthy period of time still possessed the power of germination. The method adopted was as follows: a certain number of seeds were taken from each packet, mustard, cress, beans, peas, &c., being the kinds employed, and having been weighed in a chemical balance were sealed up in tubes which had previously been exhausted of air, and kept exposed to the vacuum for a period of fifteen months. At the end of that time they were removed from the tubes and sown in flower-pots buried in moist soil. In some cases, after the seeds had been in the vacuum tubes for three months, they were transferred to other tubes charged with pure gases, such as oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon monoxide, or with aqueous or chloroform vapour, and there kept for a further period of twelve months, when they were sown as before.
In all cases the same number of seeds, of similar weights to those sealed up in the tubes, were taken from each packet, kept in ordinary air for the fifteen months, and then sown as control experiments.
The results clearly showed that the germinating power of the seeds was hardly, if at all, affected either by being exposed to the vacuum or to the atmospheres of the various gases and vapours. Further, in no single case, in the hundreds of seeds so treated, did the plants produced from them differ from the standard types grown from the control seeds even in the smallest degree.
The second paper described experiments in heliotropism, which had been undertaken by Mr. Romanes with the object of ascertaining whether plants would bend towards a light that is not continuous, but intermittent.
Mustard seedlings, grown in the dark until they were about one or two inches high, were used in all the experiments; they were either placed in a dark room and exposed to flashes of light in the form of electric sparks passed at regular intervals, or they were put in a camera obscura, before which was placed a Swan burner or arc lamp, the light from which was rendered intermittent by the regular opening and shutting of the photographic shutter. The heliotropic effect on the seedlings was found in all cases to be very marked, the most vigorous ones beginning to bend towards the light ten minutes after the flashing began, bending through 45° in as many minutes, and often through another 45° in as many minutes more. By protecting half of the seedlings from the interrupted light, by means of a cardboard cap, then after the experiment uncovering them and exposing that half for the same duration of time to constant sunlight, Mr. Romanes found that the bending was less in this latter case, that is, when the light was continuous. This result was confirmed by placing two sets of plants under exactly similar conditions before a Swan burner, the light from which was constant for one set of seedlings, and rendered intermittent for the other set by working the flash shutter; in all cases the interrupted light caused the plants to start bending more quickly, and through a greater angle in a given time.