SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS. 293 



lis Yirginicci) are thrown out with such force as to strike people vio- 

 lently in the face who pass through the woods. Collecting a number 

 of the capsules, and laying them on the floor, he found the seeds or em- 

 bryos were thrown out generally to the distance of four or six feet, and 

 in one instance as much as twelve feet. 



Many of the instances of spontaneous motion or irritability we have 

 now recorded may doubtless be explained by the application of known 

 physical laws. With others this is not so easy ; and it is but reason- 

 ing in a circle to say that, because the organisms which manifest them 

 belong to the vegetable kingdom, therefore the phenomena cannot be 

 the result of a sentient force acting upon, and independent of, matter. 

 Darwin has described how certain movements of the tendrils of climb- 

 ing plants would be termed instinctive if they were observed in ani- 

 mals. The rapid rotatory motion of the zoospores of the lower Algae 

 is absolutely undistinguishable from that of certain undoubted lowly 

 organized forms of animal life. It is very difficult to distinguish be- 

 tween the movement of a shoot of a climber performing its circles in 

 the air in search of a support, and that of the tentacula of a coral- 

 polyp in search of food. The mode in which the Venus's Fly-trap 

 seizes and encages its prey is very like that adopted by a sea-anemone. 

 Every fresh addition to our knowledge seems to confirm us in the view 

 that it is unwise to dogmatize by laying down too rigid generalities, 

 and absolutely to deny certain functions to whole classes of animated 

 beings because we do not find them exhibited in the forms most famil- 

 iar to us. I do not w T ish distinctly to claim for plants the actual pos- 

 session of a voluntary or sentient faculty. But I do wish to point out 

 that facts do not support us in asserting that a clear line of demarca- 

 tion separates the animal from the vegetable kingdom ; the power of 

 voluntary motion belonging to the one and not to the other. Taking 

 all the facts we have described into consideration, the statement seems 

 justified which has been made by one of our most experienced natural- 

 ists, Prof. "Wyville Thomson : " There are certain phenomena, even 

 among the higher plants, which it is very difficult to explain with- 

 out admitting some low form of a general harmonizing and regulat- 

 ing function, comparable to such an obscure manifestation of reflex 

 nervous action as we have in sponges and in other animals in which a 

 distinct nervous system is absent." Popular Science Review. 



