SOME PHENOMENA OF PLANT LIFE
The Professor explained next other experiments which he had performed on plants and whose results had exhibited the close parallel which plant life bears to human life. With the aid of another delicate instrument he showed how the growth of plants can be influenced by drugs and the demonstration on the screen of the manner in which the slow growth of a plant can be thus expedited was one of extraordinary interest. One was able to see the flame of life moving up the screen and recording at intervals the stages of growth, a lengthening of the intervals between each recorded glow illustrating the acceleration of growth as soon as the drug was applied. The instruments necessary to record this phenomenon are of extraordinary delicacy, and barely survived the strain of the journey from Calcutta.
The last experiment was in regard to the effect of electricity on plant life. He referred particularly to the fact that it was his aim to discover the law of growth and atrophy among plants. Such a discovery had a great bearing on the future of agriculture and would revolutionise world thought. Electricity, he explained and illustrated, would promote or retard the growth of life by reaction. In England and other countries electricity had been applied to agriculture but without exact knowledge of its varying effect on plant life. He then showed by another apparatus of extreme delicacy that electricity might retard and even repel as well as promote the growth of plant life. But if the law of growth and decay could be ascertained, it was possible to regulate the control of life under most varied conditions.
—Amrita Bazar Patrika, 29-1-1918.
Under the auspices of the Bombay University, Sir Jagadis Chundar Bose delivered on Thursday, the 31st January 1918, a lecture on the "Unity of Life." It was illustrated by lantern slides and an instructive exposition was given of some of his unique discoveries in the realm of Plant Life....
HIDDEN HISTORY IN PLANTS LIFE
"The subject of my address to-night is the 'Unity of Life.' Under a placid exterior there is a hidden history on the life of the plant. Is it possible to make the plants write down their own autographs and thus reveal their history? In order to succeed in this we have first to discover some compulsive force which will make the plant give an answering signal, secondly, we have to invent some instrument of extreme delicacy for the automatic conversion of these signals into an intelligent script; and last of all, we have ourselves to learn the nature of the hieroglyphics."
Sir J. C. Bose then explained the principle of his epoch-making Resonant Recorder which writes down the perception period of the plant within a thousandth part of a second, and writes down the action of light and warmth and drugs on the plant; the effect of vitiated air, of passing clouds, of excess of food and of drink.