50 Some Wayside Problems 



advantage. Others, like the Ivy, develop for the 

 same purpose what are called aerial roots. Others 

 again, as the Convolvulus, the Honeysuckle, and the 

 Hop, being furnished with instruments of neither 

 sort, mount by twining, like snakes, with their whole 

 growth round and round their prop. It is quite con- 

 ceivable that this habit has been a benefit to them, 

 or any habit which helps them upwards towards the 

 light and air, quo cuncta gignentium natura fert. But 

 is it equally comprehensible that it should make any 

 serious difference to a plant whether it turns to the 

 right or to the left? 1 Yet each species adopts one 

 course or the other, and keeps to it pertinaciously. 

 The Convolvulus and the Scarlet Runner, for ex- 

 ample, always go to the right : the Honeysuckle, the 

 Hop, the Black Bryony, the Climbing Persicaria, 



1 These terms are, if unexplained, in danger of being highly 

 ambiguous. Indeed, it is said to be a sure method of starting a 

 conversation in any company to turn some object round and 

 round one way, and ask whether it is turning to the right or to 

 the left. Should this by some chance fail to produce the desired 

 effect, all present agreeing, it is only necessary to inquire further 

 why such motion should be so described, and discord must 

 inevitably follow. It is indeed curious to note how hard it is to 

 describe an absolute difference in relative terms such as these, 

 and how utterly different modes of reasoning will commend 

 themselves to different minds. Take, for example, the case of a 

 plant twining like the thread of an ordinary corkscrew. Should 

 it be said to twine to the right or to the left ? To the right, says 

 one, because its course is the same as that of a boy swarming up 

 a pole, and always following his right hand. To the left, says 

 another, for it is like a spiral staircase, in mounting which one 

 must turn on his left. To the right, says a third, because looking 

 at it from without the part nearest the eye goes upward to the 

 right. To the left, argues a fourth, for fancy yourself to be the 

 prop in the middle, and the plant will cross your breast towards 

 the left. These various explanations are in fact found in print. 

 As it seems impossible to settle such a question on its merits, it 

 will be convenient to define the sense in which the terms are 

 used here. If a man clasping a tree-trunk preparatory to climb- 

 ing were suddenly, after the manner of Daphne, to be changed 

 to a plant, his arms becoming twining shoots, his right arm 

 would be said to twine to the right and his left to the left. 



