The Kinds of Work That Are Done by Plants 77 



mankind does not work. But if plant actions could be magnified 

 immensely in speed they would impress one ver}^ differently in 

 this particular. For then the observer would see the tip of every 

 growing plant-structure nodding and moving energetically about, 

 so that a meadow, a copse, or a forest would seem all of a vigor- 

 ous tremble as if straining at some hidden leash : he would see the 

 buds of some flowers open and close with a straining yawn or 

 a sudden snap, and others burst into bloom like a rocket when it 

 breaks to a spray of mani-colored lights: roots in their efforts 

 to penetrate the earth turning and twisting like angleworms im- 

 paled on the fisherman's hook: seedlings in their struggle to break 

 through the ground heaving and straining at their burden of 

 superincumbent soil, like a powerful man at some load which 

 has fallen upon him: seed pods pushing into the earth on a twist- 

 ing or hard-thrust stalk : tendrils swooping in curves through the 

 air, gripping the first thing they meet, and jerking their plants 

 towards the support. As matter of fact, there does exist a way 

 in which we can readily behold these actions thus magnified, 

 for if the structure in question be photographed at regular inter- 

 vals, say of fifteen minutes to half an hour, and then these photo- 

 graphs are run at high speed through a moving-picture machine, — 

 the thing is done. Such studies have actually been made in the 

 case of twisting roots, moving fruits, and opening flowers; and all 

 of those who have seen them agree in the impression of vigorous 

 work thus presented. 



Furthermore, if we could magnify in like manner the interior 

 parts of the plant we should witness as remarkable actions pro- 

 ceeding with equivalent vigor. In some plants the living proto- 

 plasm would be seen flowing in thick turbid streams round and 

 round within the encasing cell- wall; in certain cells those re- 

 markable structures called chromosomes would be seen perform- 

 ing their curious manoeuvres, — arranging themselves into groups, 

 collecting in pairs, passing backward and forward in a manner 

 suggestive of the measures of the dancers in a quadrille; else- 



