126 LIFE AND WORK OF SIR JAGADIS C. BOSE 



seen in a subsequent chapter. Leaving experimental 

 psychology aside, however, for the present or rather, let 

 us say, leaving it as implicated within the human and 

 comparative fields we may conveniently divide the range 

 of inquiries of this first volume of the series ' Response of 

 the Living and Non-Living ' into its four main factors : 

 of Non-Living, Vegetable, Animal, and Human ; and thus 

 we see all comprehended in the generalising sweep of a 

 semicircle. 



The Response of the Non-Living has not been inquired 

 into further ; for henceforth our investigator has been 

 devoted to the Organic field. The next volume, as its 

 name implies ' Plant Response ' is essentially confined 

 to its chosen department of Vegetable Physiology, as 

 closely as may be ; but in the immediately succeeding, 

 and indeed complemental, volume ' Comparative Electro- 

 Physiology ' we find not only an intensive application of 

 all then known of that department of animal physiology 

 to the further elucidation of plant-behaviour, but also 

 vigorous incursions into the animal physiologist's own 

 fields of labour ; with the ensuing development of many 

 of his classic experiments to more refined observation 

 and record, and larger comparative treatment of them, 

 and often accompanied by fresh inquiries. 



Thus from a study of the response of leaves (in course 

 of which Burdon Sanderson's and other previous work on 

 Dionaea Venus' Fly-trap is reviewed and interpreted) 

 we are led on by his consideration of the ordinary leaf as 

 an electrical organ to that of the curious electric organs 

 long known in certain fishes ; and thence to ' the theory of 

 electrical organs.' 



This line of work is further extended into a whole 

 chapter of comparisons of the ' response of animal and 

 vegetable skins ' in which grape and tomato on one 

 side, and frog, tortoise and lizard on the other, are 

 all shown to behave substantially alike. So again Bose 

 compares the behaviour of the epidermic and the secreting 



