RESPONSE IN THE LIVING AND NON-LIVING 103 



Heartened by this, he went to work anew at the Royal 

 Institution Laboratory. He at first feared a cold reception, 

 but was consoled by a brother physicist : ' You can't 

 poach on other people's preserves without some resentment ; 

 and you've done worse you've upset their apple-cart.' 

 He settled down to work for the vacation at his London 

 home, and then returned to the Royal Institution when 

 it reopened in October. Work abated depression, but did 

 not remove it. About this time he was cheered by a letter 

 from Professor Vines, the well-known botanist and vegetable 

 physiologist of Oxford, who expressed interest, asked to see 

 his experiments, and came accordingly to the Royal Institu- 

 tion Laboratory, bringing with him Horace Brown, another 

 effective investigator of the process of plant-life, and Howes, 

 who was Huxley's successor at South Kensington. 



With the first application of stimulus to the plant, a wide 

 swing of the galvanometer-mirror's light-beam along the 

 scale demonstrated its sensitiveness. Never before had 

 Bose seen three sober Englishmen so joyously excited : ' they 

 were just as mad as boys.' Said Howes : ' Huxley would 

 have given years of his life to see that experiment.' Said 

 another : ' What did you do to let off steam when you dis- 

 covered this ? You should shout, or you will kill yourself 

 by repressing it.' Then in business mood : ' The Royal 

 Society has not published your paper, so you can give it 

 to the Linnean. We are its President and Secretary this 

 year, so we invite you to read us a full paper. Show us 

 your experiments ; and we will invite all the physiologists, 

 and particularly your opponents.' 



We have seen how the account of Bose's discovery of 

 Electric Response of Metals and of Ordinary Plants was rele- 

 gated to the Archives of the Royal Society ; his paper before 

 the Linnean Society, where his opponents were specially in- 

 vited to attend, remained thus the only opportunity to meet 

 all hostile criticism. On the eve of this paper he writes to 

 a friend in India : ' If I ever give up this new line of inquiry 

 it shall be through no compulsion, but through choice. I 



