ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



Vegetable Animation. 



By John H. Wilson, D.Sc., F.K.S.E. 



Most people regard plants as stationary or still objects, exhibiting no 

 movement unless such as is clue to the action of the wind or other 

 external agent. The light, quivering aspen leaves respond instantly to 

 the faintest zephyr ; the great shoulders of the hurricane are needed to 

 sway the bole and boughs of the gnarled oak. Their oscillation does 

 not startle anybody, because inanimate objects possessing elasticity are 

 similarly affected by the air in motion. 



Only the slightest reflection is needed to convince us that plants 

 are seldom either quite stationary or quite still. If they are alive 

 their vital activity will find expression in movement of some kind. 

 A long list of instances could be given of parts and organs of plants 

 exhibiting movement so slow as to be inappreciable to the unaided 

 human vision, and yet quick enough to be recorded by instruments of 

 rude construction. The poet tells us that — 



The sun-flower turns on her god, when he sets, 

 The same look which she turn'd when he rose. 



This phenomenon the botanist restates when he says that the 

 capitulum of Hdinnthus exhibits heliotropism. A climbing stem 

 swings slowly round in space, in an elliptical orbit of growth, until it 

 touches some suitable support, and it thereupon winds itself in a 

 tight spiral round the object. The glandular tentacle of the leaf of 

 sundew bends, with unerring precision, over the captured prey. 



If we desire records of violent spontaneous movement on the part 

 of plants we must either turn to the pseudo-scientific literature of a 

 credulous past or to the ultra-scientific vision of the poet. We find 

 the bold delineation of the Tartarian Lamb, and note that " it has 

 something like four feet, and its body is covered with a kind of 

 down. Travellers report that it will suffer no vegetable to grow 

 within a certain distance of its feat." We do not learn from the 

 traveller's tale why this plant quadruped destroys the vegetation round 

 14 — nat. sc. — vol. xiv. no. 85. 1 93 



