PLANT INTELLIGENCE 
To a person on a country road, the wayside 
trees and flowers are too often mere happenings 
or creations. Their ways are so quiet and un- 
demonstrative, that, if he has never been taught 
differently, he rarely thinks of classifying them 
as independent, free-acting beings. ‘The fact 
that they are anchored to the soil seems to re- 
move them from the realm of self-willed crea- 
tion. Yet why should it? Are fishes not doomed 
to pass all their days in the chemical combina- 
tion of hydrogen and oxygen we call water? 
Does not the delicate Canary die if the air 
surrounding it goes below a certain tempera- 
ture? 
The fact is that many plants exhibit all the 
elemental qualities of human intelligence and 
also have vague psychic expressions of their 
own which we only understand in a very limited 
way. 
What causes the radicle or root of the smal- 
lest sprouting seedling always to grow down 
and the plumule or stem always to grow up? 
It cannot be gravity because that great earth 
pull would affect both parts equally. This same 
radicle, when it has developed into a full- 
[187] 
