would be the case when the
ether vibration reached a frequency of several billions of times in a
second. As the note rose still higher, their eyes would begin to be
affected, a red glimmer of light being the first to make its appearance.
From this point the few visible colours would be comprised within a
single octave of vibration--from 400 to 800 billions in one second. As
the frequency of vibration rose still higher their organs of perception
would fail them completely; a great gap in their consciousness would
obliterate the rest. The brief flash of light would be succeeded by
unbroken darkness. How circumscribed was their knowledge? In reality
they stood in the midst of a luminous ocean almost blind! The little
they could see was as nothing compared to the vastness of that which
they could not. But it may be said that, out of the very imperfection of
his senses, man has been able, in science, to build for himself a raft
of thought by which to make daring adventure on the great seas of the
unknown.

--_Amrita Bazar Patrika_, 24-2-1913.

DR. BOSE IN LAHORE

PLANT RESPONSE

In his third lecture delivered, on the 25th February 1913, at the Punjab
University Hall, Dr. Bose of Calcutta dealt with "Plant Response." He
said:--

In strong contrast to the energetic animal, with its various reflex
movements and pulsating organs, stands the plant, in its apparent
placidity and immobility. Yet that same environment which with its
changing influences affects the animal is playing upon it also. Storm
and sunshine, the warmth of summer and the frost of winter, drought and
rain, all these come and go about it. What coercion do they exercise
upon it? What subtle impress do they leave behind? These internal
changes are entirely beyond our visual scrutiny. Is it possible in any
way to have these revealed to us? Dr. Bose had shown the possibility of
this by detecting and measuring the actual response of the organism to a
questioning shock. In an excitable condition the feeblest stimulus
should evoke in the plant an extraordinarily large reply in a depressed
state even a strong stimulus would only call forth a feeble response;
and lastly, when death overcome life, there would be an abrupt end of
the power to answer to all. By the invention of different types of
apparatus, the lecturer had succeeded in making the plant itself write
an answering script to a testing stimulus. Scripts could also be
obtained of the plant's spon