The Response of Plants 147 



the eye. Light-waves, as we have seen, are the minutest 

 impulses of which we take account. The average length 

 is less than one forty- two-thousandth of an inch. In the 

 animal economy one special nerve is so spread out as to 

 beat in unison with these minute vibrations and we think 

 it wonderful ; it is ; but to the same vibrations the whole 

 green world responds! The vast area of the forest- 

 foliage, the countless blades upon the outspread meadows 

 of the world, the growing harvests in our summer fields, 

 the unnoted flora of the ocean waters, the floating con- 

 tinent of the Sargasso Sea all are but one far-spread 

 mechanism absolutely responsive to the pulsing beams 

 of light. 



It is as if the whole green world were one vast 

 eye. No wonder it hears not when we call. It is the 

 case of the metaphor of the scriptures: Verily, "If the 

 whole body were an eye where were the hearing ? ' ' Re- 

 sponse so absolute to light has excluded recognition of 

 those longer waves which stand to us for sound. But 

 the plants go farther yet. "Wonder of wonders! The 

 plant is able to accumulate the minutest impulses of the 

 waves of light to the very upbuilding of the organic 

 world. For the animal "light is sweet, and a pleasant 

 thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun/' but the ani- 

 mal, even the highest, may live in darkness. Homer, 

 men say, was blind. But to the plant the light is all in 

 all; and has been forever. Away in the dawning of 

 life's morning, Nature from her golden trumpet in the 

 skies blew forth a shimmering blast and sent the waves 

 along the pathway of the sun, and life obeyed, and ever 

 since the world of plants has lived to witness to the 



