PLANTS UNDER CHLOROFORM 



This is not, by any means, a full or even a sufficient 

 explanation. There is certainly some peculiar sending of 

 messages from the tip of the leaf to the swollen part itself. 

 It is not safe to say that it is a nerve message, but the 

 process resembles the way in which messages are sent by 

 the nerves in animals. Not only so, but the contraction of 

 the under side and a corresponding expansion on the upper 

 side, resembles the muscular movements of contraction and 

 expansion in animals. 



It must always be remembered that plants are alive ; their 

 living matter is not in any way (so far as we know) essentially 

 different from that of animals or of man. Their living 

 matter (protoplasm) in leaf-stalks and leaves is cut up into 

 boxes or cells, each enclosed in a case or wall of its own. 

 Yet these are not entirely independent and unconnected, for 

 thin living threads run from cell to cell, so that there is an 

 uninterrupted chain of protoplasm all along the leaf, leaf- 

 stalk, and stem. 



In this particular case of the Sensitive Plant, the leaves at 

 night regularly take up the position which they adopt when 

 injured or shaken during the daytime. 



The easiest way to produce the shrinking of the leaves is, 

 as has been mentioned, to hold a lighted match a little below 

 the leaf- tip. Severe shaking, a strong electric shock, or a 

 railway journey will also produce closing of the leaves. 



Under chloroform or ether, or if the atmospheric pressure 

 is suddenly diminished, the leaves will also fall. In some res- 

 pects they are very lifelike, for if too often stimulated they 

 become "fatigued," and will not react unless a sufficient 

 interval of rest is allowed them. 



The reaction occurs very soon if the plant is in good con- 

 dition : in less than one second it begins, and the leaf-stalk 



I9S 



