RESPONSE IN THE LIVING AND NON-LIVING 99 



his interest was still so keen that he had come up from 

 Oxford for this paper. He was naturally the person 

 to whom a]l looked to open the usual discussion after 

 the paper. He began with a compliment on Bose's 

 previous physical work ; but then said it was a great pity 

 that he should leave his own sphere of study, in which he 

 had attained such acknowledged distinction, for other fields 

 which properly belonged to the physiologists. Professor 

 Bose's paper was still under consideration for publication; 

 but he might give him the advice that the title should be 

 changed from ' The Electric Response ' to ' Certain Physical 

 Reactions/ so leaving to physiologists the use of their term 

 ' Response/ with which physicists are not concerned ; and 

 further, as to the electric response of ordinary plants 

 described at the end of the paper, he would say that it 

 was absolutely impossible, since he had tried to detect it 

 for many years past, and never could obtain any. It 

 simply could not be ! 



Another well-known professor of physiology, also an in- 

 vestigator of the reactions of muscle and nerve, followed 

 Sanderson, and substantially supported him. Two physicists 

 each asked one or two questions, and expressed themselves 

 satisfied with all the experiments just demonstrated. Bose 

 was then called on to reply. He understood that the 

 facts experimentally demonstrated were not questioned 

 by either of his critics. Instead of these being in any 

 way impugned on their experimental evidence, he was 

 asked on mere authority to make modifications, which 

 altered the purpose and meaning of the paper, and to with- 

 draw experimental facts among those which he had just 

 been demonstrating. It seemed to him inexplicable that 

 the doctrine could be advocated and in the Royal Society 

 of all places that knowledge should advance so far 

 and no further ; so he could on no account alter a word 

 of the paper, even at the risk of a refusal of publication, 

 unless he were shown, on scientific grounds, wherein the 

 experiments he had just shown were faulty or defective. 



