146 On the Campus 



tion. These are natural forces which from the begin- 

 ning have been, to plants especially, a curious stimulant. 

 These have played the part of common carriers, but 

 against them no law of liability may run. Spores, seeds, 

 the whole plant betimes, takes passage down the wind 

 and generally each goes all fitted to the journey. Long 

 before Montgolfier had ever dreamed of his balloon, or 

 Mountain tried his flying boat, plants had successfully 

 practiced aerial navigation in a thousand marvelous 

 ways. The "cotton" of the poplar floats securely around 

 the world, and the parachute of our dooryard maple 

 descending gives pointers to zeppelin and aeroplane and 

 makes a landing absolutely safe and accurate every time : 

 it grows that way! 



But the plant has another response more marvelous 

 more delicate still, matching in the exquisiteness of its 

 refinement the keenest perception among animals even 

 the finest that we ourselves possess, with all our strange 

 complexity of nerve and tissue. 



Response with us is largely a matter of sound-percep- 

 tion. But sound waves as we perceive them are clumsy 

 things, tremors of the atmosphere from a few inches to 

 a rod in length. When we go to church on Sunday 

 morning and the great organ sounds, the music actually 

 smites the walls and rafters and sometimes makes the 

 windows rattle, proving, if need there were to prove, that 

 hearing is but a mode of feeling, a part of the sense of 

 touch. All sorts of inanimate things might respond, we 

 think, to impulses that come in waves fifteen feet in 

 length ! 



The absolutely marvelous organ in the animal body is 



