206 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



other, after which he flew away with it, unmolested by 

 the wind. 



" Go, proud reasoner, and call the worm thy 

 sister ! " * 



Dr. Darwin's views on the essential unity of animal 

 and vegetable life are put forward in the following 

 admirable chapter on " Vegetable Animation," which 1 

 will give in full, and which is confirmed in all im- 

 portant respects by the latest conclusions of our best 

 modern scientists, so, at least, I gather from Mr. Francis 

 Darwin's interesting lecture.f 



"I. 1. The fibres of the vegetable world, as well as 

 those of the animal, are excitable into a variety of motion 

 by irritations of external objects. This appears par- 

 ticularly in the mimosa or sensitive plant, whose leaves 

 contract on the slightest injury: the Dionxa muscipula, 

 which was lately brought over from the marshes of 

 America, presents us with another curious instance of 

 vegetable irritability ; its leaves are armed with spines 

 on their upper edge, and are spread on the ground 

 around the stem ; when an insect creeps on any of them 

 in its passage to the flower or seed, the leaf shuts up 

 like a steel rat-trap, and destroys its enemy. J 



"The various secretions of vegetables as of odour, 

 fruit, gum, resin, wax, honey, seem brought about in 

 the same manner as in the glands of animals ; the taste- 

 less moisture of the earth is converted by the hop plant 

 into a bitter juice ; as by the caterpillar in the nut- 

 shell, the sweet powder is converted into a bitter powder. 



* 'Zoonomia,' p. 187. f ' Nature,' March 14 and 21, 1878. 

 J See ' Botanic Garden,' part ii., note on Silene. 



