146 LIFE AND WORK OF SIR JAGAD1S C. ROSE 



with high appreciation. Next at Cambridge, Sir Francis 

 Darwin presiding. Here also his audience was most 

 enthusiastic. In London he lectured before the Royal 

 College of Science. His Friday Evening Discourse before 

 the Royal Institution was given in May 1914, and proved 

 a great success. His Resonant Recorder registered the 

 speed of transmission of excitatory impulse, the Oscillating 

 Recorder traced the throbbing pulsations of the Telegraph- 

 plant, and demonstrated their striking similarity with the 

 pulse-beat of the animal heart. Finally, the Death 

 Recorder indicated by its tracing the death-throe of the 

 plant. 



His private laboratory at Maida Vale was visited 

 by various scientific and literary men. Among these 

 were Sir William Crookes, then President of the Royal 

 Society, and other leading men of science. A very distin- 

 guished animal physiologist was so strongly impressed by 

 the unexpected revelations made by the plants that he 

 frankly blurted out : ' Do you know whose casting vote 

 prevented the publication of your papers on Plant Response 

 by the Royal Society ? I am that person. I could not 

 believe that such things were possible, and thought your 

 Oriental imagination had led you astray. Now I fully 

 confess that you have all along been right/ 



Among the men of letters came Mr. Balfour, who at 

 once saw the psychological importance of the discoveries. 

 Mr. Bernard Shaw, being a vegetarian, was unhappy to find 

 that a piece of cabbage was thrown into violent convulsion 

 when scalded to death. Editors of leading journals also 

 came, and the following departure from the usual gravity 

 of The Nation will indicate the popular impression made 

 by the new revelations of plant life : 



In a room near Maida Vale there is an unfortunate carrot 

 strapped to the table of an unlicensed vivisector. Wires 

 pass through two glass tubes full of a white substance ; 

 they are like two legs, whose feet are buried in the flesh 

 of the carrot. When the vegetable is pinched with a pair 



