THE LIFE OF WATER PLANTS. 805 



sess a thick lmll of loosely woven fibers, which forms a most ex- 

 cellent raft to carry the fruit far over the sea till it is stranded on 

 some island to grow there into a new tree. Hence the cocoa 

 palm is the first settler on all coral reefs that rise above the 

 sea, and becomes the most characteristic element of tropical 

 landscapes. 



Other water plants employ animals as means of transport. 

 They are swallowed by fishes, from the intestines of which they 

 pass undigested. 



The method of dispersion of many of the Algce, is especially 

 interesting. They produce wandering cells which, endowed like 

 the infusoria with free motion, shoot around in the water till 

 they find a point on which they can settle themselves and grow. 

 The lens will show us on a stone in the brook or on a dry limb 

 that has fallen into the water a small group of slender threads, 

 perhaps about a third of an inch high, each of which consists 

 of a row of cylindrical cells set one upon another. If we take 

 the plants home, wrapped with their support in round paper or 

 moss, and put them in a dish of fresh water, we shall often be 

 able in a short time to observe the spectacle of the formation of 

 wandering cells. "With a microscope we can see the individual 

 cells breaking up and their contents creeping out of the cleft in 

 the form of oval bodies. At the forward end of these swarms 

 we may observe a number of fine threads which swing rapidly 

 back and forth till they acquire a rotary motion, by means 

 of which they swim spirally forward. The Austrian botanist 

 Unger, who was among the first to observe the formation of 

 wandering cells, believed at the time that he had surprised the 

 plants in the act of becoming animals. The vegetable wander- 

 ers are, in fact, wonderfully like minute water animals. Many 

 of them have red spots in front, which some have not irra- 

 tionally supposed were light-perceiving organs or eyes of the 

 simplest sort. 



The question whether plants have a consciousness meets us 

 here more impressively than anywhere else in the vegetable 

 kingdom. As we observe how wandering cells swim toward food- 

 stuffs and avoid poisons, seek moderate light and retire from 

 strong light, and distinguish their own likes from the wandering 

 cells of other plants, we find also really no difference. We have 

 to concede that the same feelings and expressions are apparent 

 in both ; and if we ascribe a kind of soul to the animals, we can 

 not deny it to the plants. We can not expect to find thought and 

 reason in these circles of simplest light. Those are the preroga- 

 tives of the highest inhabitants of earth. The whole existence of 

 these lower beings consists in the unconscious reception of im- 

 pressions and the unconscious movements occasioned by it. The 



