138 LIFE AND WORK OF SIR JAGADIS C. BOSE 



intervals of time by successive uniform stimuli. In answer 

 to this the plant should make its own responsive records, 

 and embark on the same cycle over again without any 

 assistance at any point from the observer. After several 

 years of trials and efforts, the problem was at last solved 

 to the utmost particular, both in refinement and with 

 high magnification. His instruments, embodying a new 

 principle, will no doubt react towards the improvement 

 of the relatively crude myograph of the physiologist. The 

 most important of the series of these instruments the 

 Resonant Recorder is based on the principle of sympathetic 

 vibration. The difficulty of friction of contact, which 

 made the direct record of the feeble plant-movement 

 impossible, is here completely eliminated. The sensibility 

 of the apparatus may be gauged from the fact that the 

 automatic records obtained by this instrument give 

 measurements of time as short as a thousandth part of a 

 second ; the results obtained with the instrument show 

 that the sensitiveness of the plant is not so feeble, and 

 its power of perception so sluggish, as have been supposed. 

 Inventions and discoveries are by some regarded as the 

 fortunate products of flashes of insight, and such minds 

 are reckoned as ' gifted ' accordingly, even up to ' genius ' 

 a quality not further explained. For others genius 

 seems but the highest development of patience, and its 

 results as rewards of continuous attention and reflection. 

 As a matter of fact, both processes intermingle. Hence 

 for Newton the suggestive fall of the apple is insufficient 

 without his own answer, when asked how he came to 

 his discoveries : ' I know not, save it be by constantly 

 intending my mind thereunto.' Indeed the man of science, 

 despite his apparent gravity of aspect and of subject, is 

 peculiarly continuous with his own childhood. Hence, 

 when we watch a child striving to solve a puzzle, to make 

 a mechanical toy, or to build his bricks into a tower, we 

 see that very alternation of patient endeavours amid 

 failures, with moments of new constructive insight, which 



