ON BIOLOGICAL ANALOGIES. 273 



any gardener ever propagated a plant by the same means."* Strass- 

 burger attributes the supposed parthenogenesis of Ccelebogyne to a 

 process of budding. 



A quarter of a century ago it would have appeared absurd 

 to speak of plants without stomach digesting and assimilating 

 animal food, and yet, strange as it would then have seemed, it has 

 now come to be recognised that there are carnivorous plants, un- 

 doubted plants, which catch insects, dissolve and digest them, just 

 as animals would do. Dr. Burdon Sanderson, after describing 

 digestion in animals, says : — " Between this process and the diges- 

 tion of the Dionasa leaf the resemblance is complete. It digests 

 exactly the same substances in exactly the same way, i.e., it digests 

 the albuminous constituents of the bodies of animals just as we 

 digest them."j" Again he says — " When we call this process diges- 

 tion we have a definite meaning. We mean that it is of the same 

 nature as that by which we ourselves and the higher animals in 

 general convert the food they have swallowed into a form and condi- 

 tion suitable to be absorbed, and thus available for the maintenance 

 of bodily life." A summary of the investigations in this direction 

 has been given in a work J accessible to all, from which it is evident 

 that there is a striking analogy between the operations performed 

 by fly-catching plants, such as the Sun-dews and the Fly-trap, and 

 the process of digestion as known in the animal world. Mr. Darwin 

 has given details of a number of experiments in this direction in 

 his volume on " Insectivorous Plants," and no one has called either 

 the facts or the inferences into question. 



Although in plants we have no nervous system, and consequently 

 no sensibility, we encounter phenomena which simulate in an extra- 

 ordinary manner the manifestations of sensibility in the animal 

 world. The clasping of the tentacles in Drosera, the closing of 

 the leaves in the Fly-trap, the movements in the leaves and leaf- 

 stalks of those called a sensitive plants." There is an apparent 

 sensibility to external impressions, and there is also the power of 

 transmitting impressions from one part of the plant to the other. § 

 The coincidence of the effects produced on animals and certain 

 plants by electricity, as demonstrated by M. Blondeau, the observa- 

 tions of Dr. Masters on the influence of the ether-spray on plants — 



* " Metamorphoses," p. 270. 



t " Gardeners' Chronicle," June 27, 1874. 



% " Freaks and Marvels of Plant-life," p. 38, &c. 



§ Ib. t p. 226. 



