244 FKAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



organic nature as represented by the fern and the oak. 

 That same sun which warmed the water and liberated 

 the vapour, exerts a subtler power on the nutriment 

 of the tree. It takes hold of matter wholly unfit for 

 the purposes of nutrition, separates its nutritive from 

 its non-nutritive portions, gives the former to the 

 vegetable, and carries the others away. Planted in 

 the earth, bathed by the air, and tended by the sun, 

 the tree is traversed by its sap, the cells are formed, the 

 woody fibre is spun, and the whole is woven to a tex- 

 ture wonderful even to the naked eye, but a million- 

 fold more so to microscopic vision. Does consciousness 

 mix in any way with these processes? No man- can 

 tell. Our only ground for a negative conclusion is the 

 absence of those outward manifestations from which 

 feeling is usually inferred. But even these are not 

 entirely absent. In the greenhouses of Kew we may 

 see that a leaf can close, in response to a proper stimu- 

 lus, as promptly as the human fingers themselves; and 

 while there Dr. Hooker will tell us of the wondrous 

 fly-catching and fly-devouring power of the Dionsea. 

 No man can say that the feelings of the animal are not 

 represented by a drowsier consciousness in the vegeta- 

 ble world. At all events, no line has ever been drawn 

 between the conscious and the unconscious; for the 

 vegetable shades into the animal by such fine grada- 

 tions, that it is impossible to say where the one ends 

 and the other begins. 



In all such enquiries we are necessarily limited by 

 our own powers: we observe what our senses, armed 

 with the aids furnished by Science, enable us to ob- 

 serve; nothing more. The evidences as to conscious- 

 ness in the vegetable world depend wholly upon our 

 capacity to observe and weigh them. Alter the ca- 

 pacity, and the evidence would alter too. WouM that 



