]7j: Professor Jagadis Chunder Bose [May 29, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, May 21), 1914. 



Donald W. C. Hood, C.Y.O. M.D. F.R.C.P., 



Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Professor Jagadis Chunder Bose, M.A. D.Sc. C.S.I. CLE., 



Professor, Presidency College, Calcutta. 



Plant-Autographs and their Revelations. 



There are professors of sciences bordering on the mystical who 

 declare that they can discriminate the character and disposition of 

 any one simply by a careful observation of his handwriting. As to 

 the authenticity of such claims scepticism is permissible ; but there 

 is no doubt that one's handwriting may be modified profoundly by 

 conditions, physical and mental. There still exist at Hatfield House 

 documents which contain the signatures of no less a person than the 

 historical Guy Fawkes of Gunpowder Plot celebrity. And those 

 who have seen them declare that there is a sinister variation in these 

 signatures. The crabbed and distorted characters of the last words 

 Guy Fawkes wrote on earth — as in the dark hours of the morning 

 on which he was executed he set his hand to the written confession 

 of his crime— tell their own tale of what had transpired in the 

 sohtary imprisonment of that fateful night. 



Such, then, is the history that may be unfolded to the critical 

 eye by the lines and curves of a human autograph. Under a placid 

 exterior, there is also a hidden history in the life of the plant. 

 Storm and sunshine, warmth of summer and frost of winter, drought 

 and rain, all these and many more come and go about the plant. 

 "What coercion do they exercise upon it ? AVhat subtle impress do 

 they leave behind ? Is it possible to make the plants write down 

 their own autographs, and thus reveal their hidden history ? AVere 

 this possible, the fact would be fraught with far-reaching conse- 

 quences. 



For about the life-reactions of plants, there are contending and 

 irreconcilable hypotheses. Does the plant, like the animal, give an 

 answering twitch to an external shock ? Is there any possible relation 

 between plant-life and our own? On these points very littleis 

 definitely known. For numerous are the experimental difficulties 

 which confront and l)affle the investigator. 



One school of thinkers, by far the most numerous, would have 

 us believe that some of the mo/t characteristic reactions in the 



