ioo GLIMPSES OF NATURE. 



turning to the light, then, we may regard as truly a 

 part of the plant's own nature, as is that of taking its 

 own and appropriate food. 



In truth, it is light which, with the plant as with 

 the animal, rules and regulates most of the ways ot 

 life. Deprived of light, the whole constitution of the 

 living being is altered. Its nutrition fails it ; its frame 

 grows weak ; its energies droop. There is a much 

 closer analogy between the blanched leaves of a green 

 plant grown in a cellar, and the pale face of a child 

 bred in the slums, than we might at first sight be 

 inclined to suppose. 



There are certain plants, notably climbers, which 

 do not exhibit for the sun the stable affection of most 

 other plants. Tendrils, whereby many of these plants 

 climb, are not influenced by the light. Were it so, 

 they would tend to move away from the support to 

 which they cling. The wisteria is an excellent illus- 

 tration of a plant which, itself a climber by means 

 of twining, winds itself regularly round its support 

 without apparently regarding the light at all. Of the 

 morning glory the same fact is true. But we do not 

 know all when we make these bare assertions about 

 the non-sensitiveness of tendrils and climbers to the 

 light. If we watch a young climbing plant when it 

 has just begun existence, and when it has raised its 

 first leaf- buds and stem above the ground, we see that 

 it is as sensitive to the light as "heliotropic," in 

 other words as any other plant. 



Later on, when the climbing habit develops and 

 appears, this sensitiveness is lost. It has exchanged 

 its early and primitive tendency the universal habit 

 of turning to the light for another habit which better 

 suits its new and acquired existence. Climbing, in 



