312 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



can attach, themselves. It is curious and interesting to watch 

 them as they grow, and to see how closely their movements simu- 

 late intelligent action. The little curled whorls go feeling about 

 on every side for a suitable foothold, groping blindly, as it were, 

 in search of a support, and revolving slowly in wide-sweeping 

 curves, until at last they happen to lay hold with their growing 

 end of a proper object. Once found, they seem to seize it eagerly 

 with their little fingers (for in the gourd the tendrils are branched, 

 not simple), and to wrap it round at once many times over in their 

 tight embrace. It is wonderful how far they will go up out of 

 their way in their groping quest of a proper foothold, and how, 

 when at length they stumble upon it, they will look for all the 

 world as if they had known beforehand exactly when and where 

 to search for it. These actions come far closer to intelligence than 

 most people imagine ; they are deliberately performed in respon- 

 sive answer to external stimuli, and only take place when the right 

 conditions combine to excite them. 



Your young gourd, then, once it grows from the seed, begins 

 from the very first to look about for a neighboring bush up which 

 it may climb to reach the sun and air that it could never get at on 

 the ground beneath, or approach by its own unaided efforts. In 

 this respect it is one of the most advanced and highly developed 

 members of its own family. Its humbler ally, the squirting 

 cucumber of the Mediterranean shores (a quaint little creature 

 about which I shall have more to say hereafter), remains to this 

 day a mere lowly trailer, unprovided with tendrils or other means 

 of climbing, and therefore necessarily confined to open, waste 

 places, where alone it can hope to procure its fair share of air and 

 sunlight. In the true cucumber, on the other hand, and the 

 bryony of our English hedges and waysides, there are climbing 

 tendrils, but they are simple and unbranched. In the gourd itself, 

 however, a plant of Indian origin, accustomed to the rough, wild 

 scrub of the tropics, the tendrils are forked, so as to aid the plant 

 in climbing rapidly over the thick and tangled vegetation of its 

 native jungles. The ample leaves then spread themselves out 

 broadly in the full sunshine, mantling their unwilling host 

 with their luscious green, and choking it slowly out by shut- 

 ting off from its foliage all the life-giving rays and carbon- 

 laden air. 



All annuals flower as soon as they have laid by sufficient ma- 

 terial for producing their blossoms. The flowers of the gourds, 

 however, like those of their allies the melons and cucumbers, pre- 

 sent one very curious peculiarity. In all these plants, the sexes 

 are distinct ; and, in most of them, the male and female flowers 

 are borne on totally different plants. The reason for this arrange- 

 ment is no doubt to be found in the common necessity for cross- 



