The Response of Plants 137 



which we betimes fail to hold communication. Some- 

 times the failure comes through lack of suitable medium 

 lack of language, we say; more frequently through 

 lack of sympathy. All sorts of speech-perfection fails 

 to enable the coal-barons to understand their employes; 

 nor does the boy fail for lack of language to communi- 

 cate with Towser. Sometimes there is absolute failure 

 on our part to appreciate the message. Response there 

 may be, to us all unperceived, strive we never so hard. 

 Marconi's messages are possibly flitting at this moment 

 far above our heads, secrets inviolate. But stranger 

 still, there may be a thousand responses, all about us, to 

 us all unnoted, unperceived, simply because they are not 

 ours; they do not come addressed to us; we are in no 

 wise related to them; they come not within our circle; 

 their flashes illuminate never the limited recesses of our 

 unheeding brains. 



Now with increase of knowledge some men have learned 

 to think of plants as very wonderful things, next to ani- 

 mals the most marvelous that come within our ken, per- 

 haps so far just as marvelous ; for could we comprehend 

 one we might the other. Nay, they are more marvelous, 

 because more hidden from us ; voiceless are they, and yet 

 their responses form part of the harmony of this world, 

 part and parcel, no doubt, of the music of the real choir 

 invisible. These responses we may only in part discover 

 because to our senses, our unaided senses, they make 

 small or no appeal. The highly differentiated nerve- 

 tracts which we denominate the organs of special sense 

 are set in these bodies of ours simply to do a certain sort 

 of necessary or essential work. We awake to conscious- 



