Consciousness in Plants. 



325 



SEEDLING OF WINTER GRAPE. 

 Earth Cut Away to Show Directions Taken by Tip of Radicle in Avoiding a Stone. 



harder and softer adjoining surfaces. Consequently, it will 

 tend to bend from the harder soil, and will thus take the 

 directions of the least resistance. So it will act if it meet 

 with a stone or the root of another plant in the soil, as must 

 incessantly occur. If the tip were not sensitive, and did not 

 excite the upper part of the radicle to bend away, whenever 

 obstacles were encountered at right angles to its growing 

 direction, it would undoubtedly be liable to be doubled up 

 into a contorted mass. But with radicles growing down 

 inclined plates of glass, as shown by experiment, it has been 



