Apparent Fallacies of Electrical Response 
in Cotton Plants. 
BY 
W. LAWRENCE BALLS, M.A., 
Fellow of St. John's College , Cambridge ; Botanist to the Egyptian Department of Agriculture. 
With a Diagram in the Text. 
HE present note describes briefly some results, negative in themselves, 
but none the less interesting, obtained in an abortive attempt to use 
the electric reactions of plant tissue, described by Waller , 1 as a general test 
for healthiness in Egyptian cotton plants. 
The significance of these electrical responses or ‘ blaze currents 5 is 
obscure, but they at least differentiate between dead and living tissue, and 
their intensity might be expected to decline along a gradient as the tissue 
became less healthy. It seemed, therefore, that they should provide 
a simple and rapid means of obtaining a rough expression of the progress 
of the injury done to cotton plants by the root-asphyxiation which takes 
place when the Nile rises, through the direct and indirect rise of the water- 
table. Study of the injury to the root itself at least should be facilitated, 
as samples of roots could be taken up with a soil-borer and tested, whereas 
it is practically impossible to duplicate the field conditions of a root-system 
and at the same time to conduct observations upon it. 
These expectations have been quite falsified, and though the method 
holds good as a ‘death-test’, it does not seem to be a ‘vitality-test’ in 
a quantitative sense. Moreover, it failed of its object with regard to the 
testing of root-samples, because the small roots give most insignificant 
responses. 
1 A. D. Waller: Signs of Life, and references. London, 1903. 
J. ChunderBose: Electrical Response in Plants. London, 1910. 
The writer only made acquaintance with this later work of Mr. J. C. Bose after these notes had 
been put together in their present form, when he found that most of the matter had been anticipated 
by Bose on a much wider scale ; notably, the reversal of polarity in fatigue, and the dependence 
of response upon anisotropic structure. These two phenomena seem to the writer to be of supreme 
importance in the elucidation of electrical responses, and as Mr. Bose’s book contains much other 
matter, the present writer may perhaps be excused for maintaining the restricted scope of this article, 
without the amplification which should have been made in the light of Bose’s researches. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XXVII. No. CV. January, 1913.] 
