SOME REMARKABLE WAYS OF PLANTS 173 



not only being alive, but knowing that one is alive. We 

 ourselves live, and we know that we live. A plant 

 lives ; but can we contend that in the feeblest degree it 

 knows that it lives ? There lies the real question ! And 

 though we constantly talk of plants as if they knew, 

 as if they understood, as if they did certain things for 

 certain ends, knowing why they so act, it is not without 

 a touch of reservation that we quote Wordsworth's 

 couplet — 



" And 'tis my faith that every flower 

 Enjoys the air it breathes." 



Not that the words may not be perfectly true, but that 

 perhaps we cannot yet be sure. 



To return to the main question : How do these things, 

 these growths, movements, adaptations, changes, develop- 

 ments, come about? By what power, through what 

 control, are they caused? 



" Nature," we are told, does this, and brings to pass 

 that. But the answer does not satisfy. " Nature " is 

 not a person, is not even a power. " Nature " means 

 simply the sum of all that we see and know to be going 

 on around us ; possibly not including inanimate rocks 

 and stones, but certainly including animal-life and plant- 

 life of every description, and all human life. When 

 we speak of " Nature " working changes in plants, we 

 might just as well speak of their doing it themselves. 



Nor would this, in a sense, be wrong. Not consciously 

 • — yet actually — they do it. 



Some animals, in cold northern winters, change the 

 colour of their coats from brown to white, a protective 



