﻿CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 81 



Zoological Station at Naples has shown that 

 when a moth flies into a flame it is attracted 

 in essentially the same way that the window 

 plant is when it turns to the light. One must 

 go to the tropics to see the highest develop- 

 ment of movement in plants, on account of 

 the high and uniform temperature, and pos- 

 sibly other environmental conditions. I have 

 been told that in Java, as one walks through 

 a tangle of sensitive plants, they will drop 

 down in their deprecating way for yards un 

 either side, as if suddenly aroused into life 

 only to be again transformed into lifeless 

 sticks by some unseen power. 



It is because plant movements are so slow, 

 as a rule, that we get the erroneous idea that 

 they are rare. Have you ever noticed that 

 beans and clover put their leaves into a differ- 

 ent position at night, the same as a sensitive 

 plant does; and that locusts, lindens, red-bud, 

 and many other trees and shrubs do the same? 

 Suppose a seed falls upon the ground and 

 germinates: if it has no sensitiveness by 

 which it feels the action of gravity, the 

 chances are that it will speedily perish, for 

 the root would not otherwise find its way in- 

 to the soil, except through accident. There is 

 one excellent reason why plants rarely re- 

 spond visibly to bodily injury, and that lies 

 in the fact that they are, for the most part. 



