taneous movements; and a recording arm
demarcated the line of life from that of death.

In taking the self-made records made by the plant it was found that
after the prolonged inactivity of a cold night the plant was apt to be
lethargic, and its first answers indistinct. But as blow after blow was
delivered, the lethargy passed off, and the replies became stronger and
stronger. After the fatigue of the day, the state of things was
reversed. The plant became very lethargic after excessive absorption of
food; but the normal activity might be restored by artificial removal of
the excess. The effect of alcohol and of various narcotics were clearly
followed in the modification of the automatic record made by the plant.

A prevailing scientific error had overcome in life, there would be an
abrupt end regarding a certain class of plants to be alone sensitive.
The lecturer showed by certain remarkable experiments that all plants
and all organs of plants were sensitive.

In certain animal tissues, a very curious phenomenon was observed. In
man and other animals there were tissues which beat spontaneously. As
long as life lasted, so long did the heart continue to pulsate. There
could be no effect without a cause. How then was it that these
pulsations became spontaneous? To this query, no satisfactory answer had
been forthcoming. Similar spontaneous movements were also observable in
plant tissues, and by their investigation the secret of automatism in
the animal world became unravelled. The existence of these spontaneous
movements could easily be demonstrated by means of the Indian "Bon
Charal", the telegraph plant, whose small leaflets danced continuously
up and down. The popular belief that they danced in response to the
clappings of the hand was quite erroneous. From the readings of the
scripts made by this plant, the lecturer was in a position to state that
the automatic movements of both plants and animals were guided by laws
which were identical. Thus in the rhythmic tissues of the plant and the
animal the pulsation frequency was increased under the action of warmth
and lessened under cold, increased frequency being attended by
diminution of amplitude, and "_vice versa_". Under ether, there was a
temporary arrest, revival being possible when the vapour was blown off.
More fatal was the effect of chloroform. The most extraordinary
parallelism, however, lay in the fact that those poisons which arrested
the beat of the heart