320 The Field Naturalist's Quarterly November 



very different from those of the kestrel. Seen from above, 

 the sparrow-hawk's dark grey back always serves to dis- 

 tinguish it from the kestrel when other means fail. The 

 small heaps of feathers which we occasionally find in the 

 fields generally denote the presence of this hawk, and tell 

 the tale of its last victims. 



(To be continued?) 



Nervous Mechanisms of Plants. 



By E. M. Wood, Liverpool Naturalists' Field Club. 



There has been a good deal of sentimental nonsense 

 written about the instinct and intellect of plants ! It is 

 really quite absurd that plants should be credited with 

 powers of discernment, almost amounting to reasoning, to 

 the extent to which some folks would go. For example, 

 in an article in one of the London dailies recently, a writer 

 notices with awestruck wonder the behaviour of a bed of 

 mint, which flourished happily enough in a garden until 

 a pig-sty was erected near by. The mint was so disgusted 

 at the advent of its unsavoury neighbour that it trans- 

 planted itself into a colony of sweet-smelling flowers at a 

 respectable distance from its old position ! 



This is the sort of fairy tale which may please some 

 people, but makes a laughing-stock of a delightful and 

 wonderful science. There is little necessity for us to stretch 

 our imagination to such telescopic lengths to perceive 

 far-fetched miracles, when there are really so many pheno- 

 mena nearer home, wonders about which we are apt to 

 talk so glibly, and about which, after all, we know so 

 uncommonly little. 



We air our acquaintance with protoplasm, vital force, 

 and transmission of stimuli, but when the outward and 

 visible signs of these invisible forces are presented to us 

 in perfect working order, then are we struck with astonish- 

 ment, like unto the astonishment of a small child beholding 

 the face of a clock whilst the works are perfectly hidden 

 from sight. 



Spontaneous movement has not always been accredited 



