CLIMBING THE HEDGEROW 19 



blackberry, but a grappling tool, it performs also the double 

 function. The very tip of the leaf can grasp, only less suc- 

 cessfully than the tendril of the white bryony, even such 

 small roughnesses as are formed by the bark of a spruce or 

 a Scotch fir. 



In a contest of what we may call, following Mr. Francis 

 Darwin, plant intelligence, perhaps the hop would come out 

 first. The time comes in summer when wide areas of Kent 

 and Worcestershire are quite changed in appearance by a 

 strangely sudden metamorphosis, when the obedient bines 

 mount their poles and wires and strings, all revolving in 

 accordance with their nature in the same spiral from left 

 to right. They are also helped to start by deft fingers. 

 But it is not in a geometric hop garden that you will best 

 discover the intelligence of the hop plant. Circumstances 

 there are too easy for the stimulus of intelligence. It is 

 at its best when seeking a support that is not near at hand. 

 You would swear then that the tip of the shoot had eyes 

 or an equivalent sense, such as roots have. The sensitive 

 tip of a root will make a bee-line for water and will slip 

 round obstacles miraculously. The hop shoot appears to 

 possess more than a spider's skill in finding support. The 

 spider lets herself down on a streamer and swings till 

 something is caught by chance and the help of the wind. 

 She plays for the accident. The hop having reached the 

 top of its support sets out for adventures new with a more 

 delicate aim. 



In a particular adventure watched by us, a shoot which 

 reached the top of its support, about seven feet from the 

 ground, set out in a quite direct line for the only pillar that 

 was within reach. It advanced at right angles to its main 

 stem, and in spite of some drooping and eccentric wavings in 

 the wind reached its bourne after a week's journeying. As 



