Page:Life Movements in Plants.djvu/18

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

xii

to analyse and study separately the conditions which modify the rate of growth. Experiments, which would have taken months and their results vitiated by unknown changes, can now be carried out in a few minutes.

Returning to pure science, no phenomena in plant life are so extremely varied or have yet been more incapable of generalization than the "tropic" movements, such as the twining of tendrils, the heliotropic movements of some towards and of others away from light, and the opposite geotropic movements of the root and shoot, in the direction of gravitation or away from it. My latest investigations have led to the establishment of a single fundamental reaction which underlies all these effects so extremely diverse.

Finally, I may say a word of that other new and unexpected chapter which is opening out from my demonstration of nervous impulse in plants. The speed with which the nervous impulse courses through the plant has been determined; its nervous excitability and the variation of that excitability have likewise been measured. The nervous impulse in plant and in man is found exalted or inhibited under identical conditions.

A question long perplexing physiologists and psychologists alike is that concerned with the great mystery that underlies memory. But now through certain experiments I have carried out, it is possible to trace "memory impressions" backwards even in inorganic matter, such latent impressions being capable of subsequent revival. Again the tone of our sensation is determined by the intensity of nervous excitation that reaches the central perceiving organ. It would be possible to change the tone or quality of our sensation, if means could be discovered by which the nervous impulse would become modified during transit. Investigation on nervous impulse in plants has led to the discovery of a controlling method, which was found