402 The Living Plant 



while illustrating with new force the fact that the race is not al- 

 ways to the swift. 



Finally, it is important to note that the ways in which plants 

 thus secure transport for their seeds, are closely analogous, if not 

 identical, in principle with those by which man supplements his 

 own feeble powers of locomotion. He cannot swim far, but he 

 can provide suitable appliances to make the winds carry him over 

 the broad ocean; he cannot fly at all, but he can place suitable 

 appliances in front of certain explosive forces and make these 

 drive him triumphantly through the air. The difference between 

 the Dandelion plume and the ship's sail, or between the explosive 

 capsules of Witch Hazel and the aeroplane engine, is merely one 

 of detail and degree. Man and plant are doing the same thing in 

 essentially the same way, the chief difference being that man 

 knows what he is doing while the plant does not. The belief that 

 seed-wing and ship-sail have been developed in ways that are 

 fundamentally the same helps to explain what I meant in the 

 chapter on Protoplasm when I said that all protoplasm can think. 



