Sense-Life and Sensibility 



plasmic matter crossed the walls and kept up some sort 

 of communication between cell and cell. 



These little living threads are certainly not nerves in 

 the ordinary sense of the word, but they may function, 

 for aught we know to the contrary, as a rudimentary 

 nervous system. The way in which they occur, very 

 generally in young unspecialised tissues, and in all parts 

 of the plants, makes one inclined to suspect that this is so. 



We have no knowledge as to how nerves really 

 convey a message, and after all what are nerves but 

 modified and highly specialised protoplasm ? 



No satisfactory chemical difference has yet been dis- 

 covered which clearly separates vegetable and animal 

 protoplasm. But the reader must be referred to Dr. 

 Francis Darwin's address ^ for an authoritative and yet 

 most interesting discussion of this difficult matter. 



A certain German professor, GustaveTheodor Fechner, 

 published in 1848 a very remarkable work entitled 

 *'Nanna" or ''Upon the Soul-life of Plants." A new 

 edition has lately been produced by Kurd Lasswitz, 

 Hamburg and Leipzig, 1908.^ 



It is very difficult to say whether or not this work 

 was intended to be taken quite seriously. Some of his 

 sallies are lyrical enthusiasms which were obviously not 

 to be understood in a purely literal sense. 



Humour takes very strange forms at times, and 

 this is especially true of its German equivalent. Some 

 of Fechner's critics, and especially Schrammen,^ have 

 perhaps taken the eloquence of Fechner much too 

 critically and seriously. 



It is full of blunders, ''howlers" of the most dis- 

 tressing character, as, for example, when he compares 

 the spirally wound threads in some stem-vessels to the 

 nerves of animals. 



As he says in another place : " The plant is ever the 



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