Life Movements in Plants, Volume IBose, Jagadis Chandra
Science
Life Movements in Plants, Volume I
Bose, Jagadis Chandra
Growth (Plants); Plants -- Irritability and movements
I have previously carried out an electric method of investigation,
dealing with the influence of electric current on conductivity. The
method of Conductivity Balance which I devised for this purpose[M] was
found very suitable. Isolated conducting tissues of certain plants
were found to exhibit transmitted effect of excitatory electric
change of galvanometric negativity, which at the favourable season of
the year was of sufficient intensity to be recorded by a sensitive
galvanometer. A long strand of the conducting tissue was taken and two
electric connections were made with a galvanometer, a few centimetres
from the free ends. Thermal stimulus was applied at the middle, when
two excitatory waves with their concomitant electric changes were
transmitted outwards. By suitably moving the point of application of
stimulus nearer or further away from one of the two electric contacts,
an exact balance was obtained. This was the case when the resultant
galvanometer deflection was reduced to zero. If now an electrical
current be sent along the length of the conducting tissue, the two
excitatory waves sent outwards from the central stimulated point will
encounter the electric current in different ways; one of the excitatory
waves will travel with, and the other against the direction of the
current. If the power of transmitting excitation is modified by the
direction of an electric current then the magnitudes of transmitted
excitations will be different in the two cases, with the result of the
upsetting of the Conductivity Balance. From the results of experiments
carried out by this method on the effect of feeble current on
conductivity, the conclusion was arrived at that _excitation is better
conducted against the direction of the current than with it_. In other
words, the influence of an electric current is to confer a preferential
or selective direction of conductivity for excitation, the tissue
becoming a better conductor in an electric up-hill direction compared
with a down-hill.
[M] _Ibid_, p. 478.
The results were so unexpected that I have for long been desirous
of testing the validity of this conclusion by independent method of
inquiry. I shall presently give full account of the perfected method,
and the various difficulties which had to be overcome to render it
practical. Before doing this I shall describe a simple method which I
have devised for demonstrating the principal results.
CONTROL OF TRANSMITTED EXCITATION IN _AVERRHOA BILIMBI_.
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