After the pick-me-up we administered poison. A
mortal dose of chloroform was dropped into the water. The graph became the record of a death agony. As
the poison paralyzed the “heart,” the ups and downs of the graph flattened out into a horizontal line
halfway between the extremes of undulation. But so long as any life remained in the plant, this medial line
did not run level, but was jagged with sharp irregular ups and downs that represented in a visible symbol
the spasms of a murdered creature desperately struggling for life. After a little while, there were no more
ups and downs. The line of dots was quite straight. The plant was dead.
The spectacle of a dying animal affects us painfully; we can see its struggles and, sympathetically, feel
something of its pain. The unseen agony of a plant leaves us indifferent. To a being with eyes a million
times more sensitive than ours, the struggles of a dying plant would be visible and therefore distressing.
Bose’s instrument endows us with this more than microscopical acuteness of vision. The poisoned flower
manifestly writhes before us. The last moments are so distressingly like those of a man, that we are
shocked by the newly revealed spectacle of them into a hitherto unfelt sympathy
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