THE GREEN WORLD 237 



them, for these sprawling, leaning habits, this sticki- 

 ness of the goosegrass, really are strength. They have 

 fitted the goosegrass to succeed beyond any other 

 plant in the crush and tangle of the hedgerow which, 

 in its every inch of space, expresses fierce competition 

 for sunlight and soil. In Nature limpness and softness 

 are very far from disqualifying in the struggle of life. 

 The goosegrass is only one of ten thousand proofs of 

 this. 



The signal difference between the intelligence of 

 a plant and the mind of an animal in some cases 

 strikes me as just one of slowness of movement and 

 fixity of station. There are plants such as this black 

 bryony which have such a look of animality about 

 them, seem so sensitive even so watchful ! that one 

 may hesitate to pluck or handle them roughly. One 

 would rather crush an aphis or a caterpillar in the 

 rosebud or tender young leaf unfolding than one 

 would stamp on the black bryony trailer, feeling 

 queerly its way across the tangled lane in May. 



To take the black bryony trailer among plants and, 

 among insects, the yellow and black barred caterpillar 

 of the cinnabar moth, which in August is seen on our 

 common feeding up for its chrysalid stage on the 

 leaves of the ragwort : does the caterpillar much more 

 convey to us the notion of mind than the trailer of 

 the plant ? I cannot say that to me it always does. 

 About both there seems to be a physical intelligence. 

 The feeding, feeding almost incessant, of this yellow 



