A CONTRADICTION in terms undoubtedly, yet. one we must face if Professor J. Chunder Bose, in his book published by Longmans, Green, Ca., "Response in the living and non-living," is to be taken seriously.
To begin with what all the world knows of the matter, we may refer to the unfortunate experience of every man who is condemned to the frequent torture of shaving. One day his favourite razor is all sharpness und suavity, It glides over the stubdle as if to the manner born, Shaying isa delight. 'The next—we draw a Veil over the scene and the wry faces ivdepicts, Edge there is none, and shaving is torture. A few days' rest, and keenness is restored without so much as alook ata strop, The same thing happens to the roughertools used by the artisan. This has long been known, so long that a nue has been given tu the condition—* fatigue."
Possibly it is this fatigue which explains the "unaccountable " accidents that occur every now and then in well-tried machinery. A railway axle snaps, a girder cracks, a steamer's shaft is broken, nobody knows why. A careful examination of the fractured ends shows no Haw: there was nothing abnonul in the way strain, yet there is the divided metal, and. possibly the result may be a terrible loss of lite.
Professor Chunder Bose might perhaps say, "Yes, one loss of life preceded by another. If people will run their metals to death what can they expect." We are putting quite a hypothetical sentence into the worthy Professor's mouth and one that is not altogether fair, since if we read rightly he is of opinion that most of our manufactured metal is dead already.
The wonder to the ordinary reader will be that any of it should be alive, Yet the Indian scientist and his book with its detailed of i quent dia-apparently cogent goes far to us willing dinit ab any rate there is something in it, What is a living thing ¢ Many definitions have been given, tried found wanting, If some men of science we shall be able ty understand the standpoint from which Professor Bose writes. Wher-jover there is response tu irritation, there is li Ina word all that is sensitive lives. That, put in a rough and ready way, will probably accepted by most ordinary people. Animals are sensitive, plants are sensitive, to light, ete.. etc.
But until} our Indian friend took it into his; head to go sys einatically to work with metals and other generals none of us had any idea that iron, tin, gold. and silver woul! likewise pond to suitable irrite ion. the instrument ordinarily employed to measure muscular irritability" is the galvanometer. Professor Bose uses the same means to reveal the sensitiveness of molals, and he finds a curious. nay a wonderful. similarity between the results. Diagrams are given which show that the tremors of a tive metal are practically identical with those of a living muscle. Being irritated the latter shows its sensitiveness by a movement which grows less and less as the irritant is continued. Exactly the same result is found to follow the " irritation" of a metal, and just as rest restores the power ofa muscle 0 dues it that of the mine: Is his been found too, that unused or sleepy muscles take a little time before the tant wakes them to fall vigour, and again the same is true of the "sleepy" metal.
Cold and beat affect animal life as we all know. Some animals become torpid and hybernate during the cold season, Perhaps the most en-ergotic of taiping becomes a wee bit son-nolent after a good tiffin on a hot afternoon. Professor Buse finds his metals most vigorous, as animal life is most vigorous, when there is a temperate condition as ta heat.
Furthermore he has treated his new found friends to stimulants and narcotics. We regret to say that even the most precise and prim amongst them are net provf ductions, but follow se closely human experience as to make the similarity seem a bit uncanny.
slight dose of a narcotic, as is well known, frequently acts asa stimulant on man: it is the bigger dose which produces the sed: tive effect. Po sh does fur tin precisely what opium a as ap in this From this it is but a step to learn that metals can be poisoned, that if an antidote be administered promptly they can be recovered, and that after a rest they are all right again. All this has been proved, one of the sons used being oxalic acid. Leb the antidote be too long delayed and death results for the metal as sure eggs are eggs, For different metals different poisons are required, and we shall perhaps hear in the net distant future of some chemical Locusta or Borgia famous for her metal-poisoning power. Metals in a tate of suspended animation can be restored if proper means are taken, It seems that certain poisons cause spasms in metals us others do in the human frame. Irom this present we shall read a new weaning into such phrases as that "So-ant-So is made of money," that "Miss Gotrox is a brazen-faced hussy, "and that " Oid Skin-fiat has an iron constitution." They may be much more literally true than we thought.
Fortunately Professor Bose thinks that our ill-treatment of most of the metals in use, the treatment with chemicals, the roasting in ovens and the smelting in furnnees, ete., has completely killed them. Still our experience with razors makes us doubtful. As a summing-up of the new doctrine, it is claim -d that when animal, vegetable, and mineral matter give similar results when tested electrically with the galvanometer, it may be taken for granted that the mineral matter is just as much alive as the two others. When it is not, the galvanometer makes no sign. We shall wait awhile, bow-ever, before to this romance of reasoning we place the final Q.E.D.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.