IRRITABILITY OF PLANTS 147 



of forceps, it winces. It is so strapped that its electric 

 shudder of pain pulls the long arm of a very delicate lever 

 which actuates a tiny mirror. This casts a beam of light on 

 the frieze at the other end of the room, and thus enormously 

 exaggerates the tremor of the carrot. A pinch near the right- 

 hand tube sends the beam seven or eight feet to the right, and 

 a stab near the other wire sends it as far to the left. Thus can 

 science reveal the feelings of even so stolid a vegetable as the 

 carrot. 



The Royal Society of Medicine also became keenly 

 interested in Bose's work on the effect of drugs on vegetable 

 tissues, and asked him to deliver a discourse before the 

 Society. Sir Lauder Brunton wrote to him : 



Ever since I began the study of Botany in 1863, and still more 

 since I made some experiments on the action of poison on plants 

 in 1865, the movements of plants had a great attraction for me. 

 For Mr. Darwin I made some experiments on digestion in insecti- 

 vorous plants in 1875. All the experiments I have yet seen 

 are crude in comparison with yours, in which you show what a 

 marvellous resemblance there is between the reactions of plants 

 and animals. 



The lecture before the Royal Society of Medicine was 

 highly appreciated by the leading members of the medical 

 profession, and the Secretary of the Society officially 

 addressed the Government of India, expressing their high 

 appreciation of the work which was ' so entirely new in 

 biological science.' 



He was next invited to lecture before leading Universities 

 of the Continent. He first visited Vienna, where amongst 

 his audience were many leading physiologists of Austria 

 and Germany, who paid the generous tribute that ' Calcutta 

 was far ahead of them in these new lines of investigation/ 

 In Paris he met with similar success. He received cordial 

 invitations from different German Universities for a series 

 of lectures. He was to have begun these lectures from 

 the 3rd of August, 1914, and was actually on his way 

 to Bonn, but fortunately was just in time to retrace 



