Natural History 615 



and re-divides, forming thousands of cells, a mode of development 

 which allows of considerable division of labour. But we can go a 

 step further and say that plants and animals agree not only in the 

 individual beginning and in their cellular structure, but in the 

 essential processes of life. Both show nutrition and the distribu- 

 tion of the food through the body; both show digestive ferments 

 and breathing. It is true that photosynthesis is peculiar to green 

 plants, and that there is little in the vegetable kingdom corre- 

 sponding to the kidney function in animals; yet there is much in 

 common among all forms of life. 



It may appear at first sight that this conclusion breaks down 

 badly in regard to moving and feeling, which are the master-ac- 

 tivities in the animal and are anything but conspicuous in most 

 plants. Yet when we begin to think of leaves rising and falling, 

 of flowers opening and closing with the waxing and waning light 

 of day, we see that there is much movement. And when we begin 

 to think of the way stems bend to the light and roots make for 

 moisture, or of the sundew answering back to the fly's touch, of the 

 tendril responding to its contact with a slender twig, we see that 

 there is much feeling in plants. In the Far East the Sensitive 

 Plant often grows in great masses, and if a stone be sent crashing 

 in among them one can see the leaves sinking down into the col- 

 lapsed rest position, and the stimulus spreading in a circle like a 

 splash in a pond. The Venus fly-trap may be cheated by a little 

 piece of moist paper and made to close on booty not worth having, 

 but if it be cheated twice in rapid succession it will not usually 

 answer back to a third duping. This is surely the beginning of 

 memory an enregistering of experience so that future activity 

 is modified. We need not consider in detail the modes of move- 

 ment among plants, but just as many a sedentary animal like a 

 coral or a sea-squirt shows something of the plant in its somnolent 

 constitution, so we may say that the animal is lurking in many a 

 plant. There is more than a trace of a dream-smile in many an 

 orchid. 



