The Response of Plants 141 



(from the platform) a handful of leaden shot and you 

 should perceive the impact of their falling weight. 



I am fully aware that there have been men to argue 

 that apart from eyes there were no light ; apart from ears 

 there were no hearing; but the modern view is exactly 

 the opposite. Without light there had been no eyes; 

 without sound no hearing. The eye is a response to the 

 existence of light-waves; the ear to the fact of waves of 

 sound. 



We begin now to perceive what is meant by a response. 

 In a vast and magnificent sense the whole organic world 

 is a response. 



Two great factors are before us : first, the world is full 

 of energy in manifold phase and guise ; second, organic 

 things are plastic, yield to the onset of every sort of en- 

 ergy and by yielding show response. When we speak to 

 a friend and he replies, explanation lies in the fact that 

 we are capable of producing or controlling a certain 

 modicum of energy which produces a physical effect by 

 which our friend perceives and to which he responds. 

 That a similar address made to a plant elicits no response 

 is due simply to the fact that our relations with the plant 

 have not been such as to render such intercommunication 

 mutually advantageous. We speak an unknown tongue ; 

 or more exactly, we start a series of wave-lengths which 

 the plant has never learned to register, no more than we 

 are able, codeless, to capture the electric impulses from 

 Marconi's tower. Indeed it is not to be doubted that 

 there are modes of motion all about us that we know 

 nothing at all about; of some we become cognizant 



