CRESCOGRAPH Non-living Things have also Feeling like living things

CRESCOGRAPH Non-living Things have also Feeling like living things

According to him the non-living things have also feeling like living things. Huxley visited Bose Institute at Calcutta and gives a brilliant account of the wonderful discoveries of JC Bose about Plant life. JC Bose is best known as a physicist who invented the Crescograph that magnifies the movements of plant tissues ten million times.

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A Crescograph is a device for measuring growth in Plants.

It was invented by great Indian Scientist Jagadish Chandar Bose who is also known as Polymath, Physicists and Biologist, Botanist and Archaeologist. It was invented in the early 20th Century.

This device uses a series of clockwork gears and smoked glass plate to record the movement of a tip of a plant or its roots at magnification up to ten million times. Marks are made on a plate at interval of a few seconds demonstrating how the rate of growth changes under various stimuli. He experimented with Temperature, Chemicals, Gases and Electricity.


Huxley was greatly impressed by Bose’s instrument at the Bose Institute. According to him, Huxley watched the growth of a plant being traced out automatically by a needle on a sheet of smoked glass. He watched a plant feeding in the process it was exhaling minute quantities of oxygen each time accumulation of oxygen reach a certain amount, a little bell, like the bell that warns when we are nearly at the end of our line of typewriting automatically rang.

When the sun shine on the plant, the bell rang after regularly. Shaded the plants stopped feeding; the bell rang only at long interval or not at all. A drop of stimulant added to the water in which planet are standing, set the bell wildly tinkling, as tough some record-breaking.

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Sir J.C Bose also explained re-growth of a tree from one place to another place.

According to him, transplanting a full grown tree is generally fatal for it; the plant sometimes dies. He compared this with amputating arms and legs of a human being Anesthesia. Bose administered Chloroform to the plants. The operation was completely successful.

On waking, the anesthetized tree immediately took roots in its new place and flourished. He also showed that an over dose of chloroform could be fatal to a plant as it is fatal for a human being. His instrument showed that plants to respond and have like as humans do.

This instrument also records the beating of a plant’s heart. The instrument made it possible to see a thing that was earlier impossible to see even with the help of the most powerful microscope. The instrument also shows that how a mortal dose of Chloroform has same effect on the plant’s heart as it has on a Human heart. The recorded graph of a poisoned plant became the record of a death agony. This graph explained how plants suffered agony similar to animals and humans if they were poisoned.


Hence, The Crescograph is a very important experiment in history of Science and Technology.

Hence, it is a warning to sensitive souls, such as these who have been converted into vegetarian after a visit to a slaughter house, should be well advised to keep clear of the Bose Institute lest they have to reduce themselves to a mineral diet after watching the ‘Murder of a Plant.’

Hence, it is right to say that inanimate things also have feelings and life like Human Beings. So, The Cresco graph made by JC Bose had helped us in understanding the concept of life among plants in a much easier manner.

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