VEGETABLES. 329 



of the extremity of the vine, previously removing all weeds 

 from within reach. In a few hours, in every instance, I found 

 that the runner had turned towards the stake, and soon the 

 tendrils had seized hold of it and had it in fast embrace. Did 

 this indicate a different instinct in plants from that found in 

 animals ? With this knowledge of its instincts, the vine 

 advancing over the ground more than a foot in twenty-four 

 hours, having the runner slightly elevated above the surface, 

 with its tendrils with their wonderful instincts stretched out, 

 hungry looking, into space, the unfolding growth at the extrem- 

 ity resembling a reptile's head, and the numerous leaves in 

 orderly arrangement, stretching far behind like a multitude of 

 expanded wings, — it needed but a slight play of the imagination 

 to see before one some wonderful reptile of a geologic age. 



As an illustration that a close study of nature, aside from the 

 elevation of character and calling, which sure return she makes 

 the intelligent husbandman, has, also, its practical value, let us 

 here draw an inference. If the squash vine has this sure instinct 

 to detect and seize hold of, and thus support itself by whatever 

 protrudes above the surface of the earth, would it not be well 

 in many localities, to supply the field with stakes, or leave, here 

 and there, stout weeds, that the summer gusts may not prove so 

 injurious to the vines, rending, twisting and turning them, as 

 every farmer knows is apt to be the case when the fruit is in 

 the prime of its setting. The tendril of the squash, in twisting 

 around the object it has seized, forms a most finished spiral 

 spring, which, yielding, graduates into nothing, the effects of a 

 sudden force. The more fully to answer this end, it will often- 

 times be found that the spring is compound in its character ; in 

 one-half of its length the revolution being to the right, and in 

 the other to the left, and thus the effect of rude force is still 

 better graduated. Truly a wonderful contrivance of the All- 

 wise Creator. 



The instinctive knowledge of the tendril office is, in plants, 

 so strong, that we recently noticed an instance in the woodbine, 

 where the tendrils passing over a smooth, perpendicular surface, 

 and consequently being unable otherwise, to secure a hold and 

 support the vine, their ends flattened themselves against the 

 surface, and spreading out into pads, resembling those attached 

 to the feet of a fly, secured quite a firm hold, and thus answered 

 the end of their creation. 



