

162 LIFE AND WORK OF SIR JAGADIS C. BOSE 



not fully succeed in the needful analysis of the different 

 environmental factors and their resultant responses. But, 

 as we have seen above, the experimental resources of 

 instrumentation and record have now been raised to an 

 entirely new level through Bose's labour. And secondly, 

 because of the inadequate recognition of organic control 

 in the plant, fully analogous to that presented by animal 

 life in fact what we have always recognised in the animal 

 as essentially associated with nerve action. 



The reader may here fairly ask, What clearer inter- 

 pretation of plant-movements not only of the motile 

 organs of Mimosa and its like, but of other movements 

 associated with growth is now being obtained through 

 these advances ? A fully adequate answer to the question 

 will be found in Bose's recent volumes on ' Life Movements 

 in Plants ' ; here we must endeavour to give such an outline 

 of main results as may be possible within the present narrow 

 limits, alike of space and of avoidance of technicalities. 

 So instead of following the order of existing treatises, or 

 even of Bose's own discoveries, which have been partly 

 determined by circumstances, let us start with such move- 

 ments of plant responses as seem simplest and most un- 

 differentiated, and thence proceed to the subtler and more 

 evolved . 



To realise concretely something of the problem of 

 vegetable physiology in general and of plant-movement 

 in particular, let the reader imagine himself accompanying 

 a botanist among his students in the garden some day 

 when he is pointing out to them many of the phenomena 

 of plant-movement with which they have broadly to 

 acquaint themselves in living nature before proceeding 

 to their experimental studies. 



Here, then, are seedlings in abundance, alike in cultiva- 

 tion and as springing weeds. Some are growing erect in 

 ordinary light ; others in shaded corners are bending 

 their stems to the light, and exposing their cotyledons and 

 young leaves accordingly. This may lead us to notice the 



