CHAPTER II 



DO PLANTS AND METALS FEEL ? 

 The Amazing Experiments of Sir Jagadis Bose 



AS long ago as 1879 a well-known French scientist 

 published a book in which he pointed out that the 

 ^life of plants has much in common with that of 

 animals. At night, for instance, a green-leaved plant 

 takes in oxygen and gives out carbon dioxide exactly in 

 the same way as you or I or a dog. In fact, the plant 

 breathes. 



Again, a plant has digestive ferments which change 

 starch into sugar, and it forms certain waste products, 

 though these it seems able to use up again. Plants have 

 no muscles, yet they have considerable powers of move- 

 ment. Blossoms turn their open faces toward the sun 

 or lower their heads when rain falls, the tips of twigs are 

 in constant movement, while some plants, such as the 

 sundew, the Venus fly-trap, and the mimosa, have very 

 special movements. The sundew closes its tentacles about 

 the fly caught on its sticky leaf, the fly-trap snaps together 

 the two halves of its trap-shaped leaf-blade, while the 

 mimosa shrinks away from the human hand before it is 

 actually touched, and when touched collapses like a closed 

 umbrella and for the time shams dead. 



But it was not until the present century that there 

 appeared a scientist who began a deep study of these 

 phenomena and made the startling discovery that plants 

 have hearts. This was Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose, the first 

 Hindu scientist to attain a world-wide reputation, and 

 the first Indian to be knighted for scientific work. 



Sir Jagadis Bose is of small stature and is now no longer 



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