244 LIFE AND WORK OF SIR JAGADIS C. BOSE 



is perceived and recorded by the tree in its own peculiar 

 script and by an instrument devised for the purpose. 

 Here, too, we have an illustration of the significance of the 

 Institute as no mere laboratory of this or that peculiar 

 line of physical or physiological research, but as from 

 the first aiming at the concentration of the main resources 

 and methods of the physical sciences, and their bearing 

 upon the central problem of all the biological sciences 

 the problem of the essential processes of life itself. 



The spacious Entrance Hall has a long series of glass 

 cases which at once exhibit and preserve the essential 

 apparatus of many past years of inquiry, from physical 

 researches on electric waves to physiological researches 

 on life. These are arranged in sequence of increasing 

 perfection in observation and record. Step by step one 

 passes from instruments direct and simple, sometimes 

 rough and ready, to the present wellnigh magical elabora- 

 tion of delicacy and exactitude. Here we have Bose's 

 first apparatus for space signalling so far back as 1895. 

 Recent instruments record the hitherto imperceptible 

 pulsation of a plant's growth, marking perception-time 

 within the thousandth part of a second and measuring 

 ultra-microscopic movements. Thus the significance of 

 the Institute as a centre of new invention of the most 

 delicate apparatus, and as a centre of exceptional skill in 

 construction, with the importance of these to science and 

 eventually to industry, becomes apparent. For it is here 

 worth noting that most of the great physical discoverers 

 and inventors, as from Watt to Kelvin, or back to Galileo 

 and Leonardo da Vinci, or onwards to Bell and Edison, 

 arid now to Bose himself, have been their own instrument- 

 makers. For hand and brain alternately stimulate each 

 other, to the complemental advances we call respectively 

 ' discovery ' and ' invention.' 



Passing by the great Lecture Hall, we may look into 

 the actual Laboratories, where researches are in progress. 

 These are partly in the main building, but in greater number 



