140 LIFE OF A TREE. 
off, or whether higher up in the air there is more 
sun and less shade? Here again we are left in 
darkness : Wordsworth, it is true, says, 
“It is my faith that every flower 
Enjoys the air it breathes.” 
But science cannot prove the poet’s words to be 
correct. 
Are we then to consider our Tree as a being 
without anything like instinct? No!—and we 
think we can establish some sort of a claim for it 
on this score, if not on the other, by relating some 
remarkable incidents, which seem to lead us to the 
conclusion that plants really have a lowand feeble 
sort of instinct. 
We may ask, indeed, had instinct nothing 
to do with the potatoe stem in directing its strug- 
gling efforts to reach the hole at which lght 
poured into its dark prison? But the following 
are far more striking cases. Travellers in the 
Indian Archipelago have described a curious tree, 
called the Screw-pine, which performs a very 
interesting action. We have been eye-witnesses 
to the same fact, and can therefore vouch for its 
accuracy. The tree is supported a little way 
