PLANT-AUTOGRAPHS AND THEIR REVELATIONS.* 
By Prof. Jacapis CHUNDER Boss, M. A., D. Se., C. 8.1. C. 1. E., 
Professor, Presidency College, Calcutta. 
There are professors of sciences bordering on the mystical, who 
declare that they can discriminate the character and disposition of 
anyone, 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 con- 
ditions, 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 solitary 
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? What subtle impress do they 
leave behind? Is it possible to make the plants write down their 
own autographs, and thus reveal their hidden history? Were this 
possible, the fact would be fraught with far-reaching consequences. 
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 little is 
definitely known. For numerous are the experimental difficulties 
which confront and baffle the investigator. 
One school of thinkers, by far the most numerous, would have us 
believe that some of the most characteristic reactions in the animal 
are not to be found in the plant; for example, it is urged that, unlike 
the animal, the majority of plants are insensitive to a blow, exhibiting 
1 Reprinted by permission from pamphlet copy published by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. 
Lecture at the Weekly Evening Meeting, Friday, May 29, 1914. 
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