San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1925-08-23

Touch Sensitive Plant with Fire
and Its Leaves Fold Up and the
Branch Bearing Them Drops
Sharply Away from the Region of
Tormenting Flames. "How Does
This Differ in Amy Way from
Human Reactions 2" Asks DR.. Bose.
KHoST people have the idea that flow
lV ers and trees are stolid, senseless,
inanimate things, without any of
the feelings or emotions that men and ami
mails possess.
But recent discoveries by Sir Jagadis
Bose, distinguished plant psychologist of
Calcutta, India, throws an entirely differ
ent light on the matter. Dr. Bose has es-
tablished the remarkable fact that mem
bers of the vegetable kingdom suffer from
pain and cold and heat, rejoice when they
are properly fed and otherwise well-treat-
ed, and show evidences of love and hate,
just as men and animals do. Furthermore,
vegetable creatures see, feel and display a
remarkable degree of intelligence, and are
willing even to sacrifice their lives for the
sake of new generation. Furthermore,
they seem to have sense of beauty,
"dorning themselves in gay colors and diff
using their breaths with captivating
odors.
In explaining his discoveries Dr. Bose
says
"The Investigations have carried out
show that all plants, even the trees, are
fully alive to changes in environment, and
they respond visibly to all stimuli, even to
the slight f1uctuation of light, caused by
the passing cloud. have established the
fundamental identity of life reaction in
plants and animals"
By DR.. Bosses experiments it would
seem that even the humble potato dug by
the spade and carried into damp cellar
before it finds its way to the family dinner
plate, is living thing, with an appropriate
feeling for a temperate resting place, and
a shuddering horror for cold; that the
smell of geraniums and fesh-odored plants
is a perfect abomination to the rose; and
that there is good reason for the pure
white lily to shudder whenever a dirty
hand touches it.
How does DR.. Bose find out these
things? By instruments so delicate that
the slightest movement in a plant or
flower can be detected by them and re-
corded. Take peep at him in his labora-
tory at Presidency College, Calcutta.
Strapped on the table in front of him is
an unfortunate carrot. In each end Of
the carrot small wire is embedded. This
pair of wires runs to an instrument con-
nected up with an electric battery. To
the instrument is attached also small,
loose mirror. This mirror reflects beam
of light on a chart at the other end of the
room, and its faintest culver can be exag-
eerated from one million to ten million
times.
DR.. Bose now approaches the carrot
with pair of pinchers. If that carrot IS
only an inert, feelingless mass Of vege-
table cells the pinching it is about to IN
dergo will cause no movement in it, and
therefore there will be nothing to make
the little mirror tremble.
But If the carrot can feel to TIE slight
est degree, or, to put it more scientifically,
If there is the slightest response of its
cells 10 the stimulus of the pinch a tiny
current of electricity will be released and
the little mirror will wabble, wabble TO
the degree the carrot responds to the
pinch. This response may or may not in
dictate pain as we know it. II the same
sort Of instrument were attached to hu-
man beings under the same circumstances
the nerve reaction of the pinch would be
recorded and it would certainly indicate
pain. So if the carrot then responds even
in the slightest degree in the same man
ner that human being would, is it not
possible that it also feels pain? DR.. Bose
thinks so.
At any rate, the doctor has now ap-
preached the carrot and, 10 and behold,
the little mirror wabbles and the beam of
light iickers up and down the screen as
though it were the inarticulate cry from
the lowly vegetable!
But the carrots reaction to the pinch is
not the only emotion it displays. It is
strapped TO other ingenious devices and
its response 70 cold and heat, anesthetics
and poisons is also recorded. In each