XI 



A VERY INTELLIGENT PLANT 



PEOPLE who have never had occasion to 

 observe plants closely often fall into the error 

 of regarding them as practically dead dead, 

 that is to say, in the sense of never doing or con- 

 triving anything active. They know, of course, 

 that herbs and trees grow and increase ; that they 

 flower and fruit ; that they put forth green leaves 

 in spring and lose them again in autumn. But 

 they picture all this as taking place without the 

 knowledge or co-operation of the plant itself - 

 they think of it as doneybrthe tree or shrub rather 

 than by it. Those, however, who have kept a close 

 watch upon living green things in their native con- 

 dition have generally learned by slow degrees to 

 take quite a different view of plant morals and 

 plant economy. They begin to find out in the 

 course of their observations that the life of a 

 herb is pretty much as the life of an animal in 

 almost everything save one small particular. The 

 plant, as a rule, is rooted to a single spot ; the 

 animal, as a rule, is free and locomotive. 



Yet even this difference itself is not quite abso- 

 lute : for there are on the one hand locomotive 



plants, such as that quaint microscopic vegetable 



.58 



