166 LIFE AND WORK :OF SIR JAGADIS C. BOSE 



for which Moliere's invaluable satire on would-be medical 

 and scientific education two centuries and a half ago is still 

 needed. ' Why does opium make one sleep ? ' ' Because 

 it has a dormitive virtue/ replies the candidate, and 

 passes with ' honours ' accordingly. So the earthward root 

 has ' geotropism/ an earthward property. And why does 

 the shoot ascend in the very opposite direction ? By 

 ' negative geotropism ' surely the very poorest term in 

 science for this loftiest adventure of life upon the globe. 

 And why does the branch of the leaf stand out laterally ? 

 By ' dia-geotropism ' ! 



Again, how do leaves turn to light ? In virtue of their 

 ' heliotropism ' or ' phototropism.' Yet why sometimes 

 also turn from the light ? By ' negative phototropism.' 

 And so on. This facile verbalism gives us ' hydro- 

 tropism ' for the root's water-quest, and ' rheotropism 

 when roots in water are observed to bend against the 

 stream ; ' chemotropism ' for its utilisation of salts, and 

 so on. The tendril's touch is its ' thigmotropism ' ; and 

 there are yet more uncouth names. 



Intellectual activities have their verbalisms, their 

 confusions and misdirections, as well as emotional ones ; 

 and these may also accumulate into what are practically 

 diseases. Every science of course needs its technical 

 terminology as definite, precise and full as need be ; 

 but all have suffered from verbosity of nomenclature, 

 and notoriously botany most of all. Thus apart from 

 the systematic names for each and every species and order 

 which are of course indispensable there are some fifteen 

 or twenty thousand technical terms in the botanical 

 dictionaries, of which the majority have lapsed; but too 

 many still survive, even in modern text-books, to the 

 perplexity of the student ; too many even of these are given 

 him by his professor in lectures, and still he uses too many 

 himself, though fewest of all. It is of real advantage 

 for the advance of our science, as well as of necessity for 

 its most general understanding, to reduce this nomenclature 



