PLANT RESPONSE 121 



that ' all the characteristics of the responses exhibited by 

 the animal tissues, were also found in those oj the plant.' 

 The results of these extended investigations, embodied 

 in a series of seven papers, were communicated to 

 the Royal Society in December 1903. They were 

 regarded as of such importance that the Royal Society 

 accepted them for publication in their 'Philosophical 

 Transactions/ But the same hostile influence which had 

 attempted the suppression of his Linnean Society paper 

 was again in full activity. Bose was now away from 

 England, and his opponents had their way. The Royal 

 Society then informed Bose that their appreciation of the 

 value of his work was shown by their willingness to accept 

 his papers for the ' Transactions.' His results were, however, 

 so unexpected and so opposed to current theories that 

 nothing short of the plant's automatic record would carry 

 conviction ; his papers would therefore be placed, for the 

 present, in the Archives of the Society. 



This postponement, and virtual refusal, of publication 

 for the condition laid down seemed at that time an 

 impossible one was of course widely taken, and in India 

 especially, as a strong, if vague, confirmation of the dubious- 

 ness of Bose's alleged discoveries. But happily Bose's 

 response to this combination of environmental stimuli, 

 by turns so depressing and so exasperating, was of the 

 intensity and duration required for the large and sustained 

 experimental productivity summarised in the two books 

 which Bose wrote for publication. 1 They include an 

 amount of work and fresh result during the three years 

 of their production to which there can be few parallels 

 in science ; so that; despite the painfulness of these ex- 

 periences, we can now hardly regret them. We must, in 

 fact, rather congratulate their sufferer upon stimuli which 

 have proved to be of such effective increase to his own 

 movements and growth. 



1 Plant Response, 1906, and Comparative Electro-Physiology, 1907. 

 Longmans, Green & Co. 



