PLANT RESPONSE 123 



in the fourth volume of this weighty series, as ' Researches 

 on Irritability of Plants ' (Longmans, 1913), with 376 

 pages and 180 experiments. The work of the years follow- 

 ing appeared in the ' Philosophical Transactions ' of the 

 Royal Society for 1913. That of 1917 and 1918 has been 

 mainly published as ' Life Movements in Plants/ this being 

 Vol. I of the ' Transactions of the Bose Research Institute ' 

 (Calcutta, 1918), with its 251 pages, including 21 papers. 

 Vol. II of the ' Transactions ' for 1919 is just published, 

 with its 344 pages and 30 papers. After the publication of 

 one more volume their fertile author hopes to conclude 

 his researches on Plant Movements, and thus to turn to 

 other classes of problems old and new, each long meditated, 

 but practically delayed. 



Given this long series of six volumes, with well 

 over 2500 pages describing a full thousand and more of 

 experiments, with summaries of their results, the writer has 

 found it no easy problem to attempt any reasonably intel- 

 ligible account of their main results, such as has been 

 already offered above in Chapter IV, for Bose's initial work 

 with electrical waves. To do this at all adequately, 

 for such a multiplicity of problems in the plant world 

 explored by our author, within the limits of present 

 space is impossible ; since fuller explanation, rather than 

 further concentration, would often be desirable. For 

 adequate summary, even of main results, an entire volume 

 is needed, and such a volume only Bose himself can write. 



Moreover, a biography is like a portrait : it seeks 

 essentially to depict the man, and it can at best only 

 indicate the scope, the principle and process of his life- 

 work ; its volume of accomplishment must in general 

 be left to the specialists to whom they are addressed, 

 while even their principal results in the present case are 

 still only beginning to be adequately summarised for 

 students of bio-physics and of vegetable and animal 

 physiology (indeed of experimental psychology too) in 

 the various text-books and treatises of these subjects 



