92 LIFE AND WORK OF SIR JAGADIS C. BOSE 



Call thou thy scholar-band come forth 

 Out on the face of nature, this broad earth. 

 Let them all gather. So may our India, 

 Our ancient land, unto .herself return ; 

 O once again return to steadfast work, 

 To duty and devotion, to her trance 

 Of earnest meditation. 



So far, then, goes the story of this Paris paper, told at 

 greater length than usual, alike on personal grounds and 

 because of its importance as including new departures. An 

 essentially similar paper was next read before the Physical 

 Section of the British Association at its Bradford meeting 

 in September in 1900, and was cordially received by 

 the physicists. At this meeting also several of the most 

 prominent of them suggested to Bose to offer himself as 

 candidate for an important chair of physics then vacant, 

 and with warm assurance of their support ; but Bose was 

 too loyal to his own country and University seriously to 

 feel the temptation, though he naturally appreciated the 

 compliment. A faint shadow was however felt by Bose 

 at this meeting ; for he noticed that while the physicists 

 were warm in their appreciation of his work, and readily 

 took up his interpretations, the members of the Physi- 

 ological Section, who had been invited to hear the 

 paper as is the custom when ' boundary questions ' 

 are raised looked perplexed and kept silent ; the method 

 of experimentation, by this time familiar to the physicists 

 from Bose's previous papers, being strange and unfamiliar 

 to them. It may here be mentioned that this method of 

 ' conductivity-variation ' has since been used with great 

 success in Bose's subsequent physiological work, and has 

 now found acceptance among vegetable physiologists ; 

 presumably by this time among animal ones as well. 



Before leaving India, Bose had begun to suffer from 

 an illness which subsequently became serious, brought 

 on by too continuous fatigue and constant standing 

 at experiments. After being unsuccessfully treated in 



