238 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



and black caterpillar of the ragwort, what is it but an 

 act of physical intelligence ? Shake it off the rag- 

 wort. Presently it will climb up a neighbouring 

 plant. It seems to test the leaves of this new station, 

 and, finding that they are not the right sort, refuses 

 to nibble. But this is merely intelligence of the 

 sense of taste, a physical matter. The black bryony 

 would in the same way refuse to feed on substances 

 that Nature has not included on its menu if these 

 were set at its rootlet tips. It would be just as in- 

 telligent about its food, and just as fastidious as the 

 caterpillar : indeed, many plants are much more 

 fastidious and discriminating in this than many cater- 

 pillars ; which, their ordinary food plant failing, or 

 being denied them, in captivity will eat each other. 

 The one mysterious matter in which the caterpillar 

 seems more intelligent than the plant is " shamming 

 death." The bryony, at any rate, never does that ; 

 or, to put it in a way that is a little less unacceptable 

 Nature never shams death for a plant when an 

 enemy threatens it. The most Nature perhaps does 

 is to provide it with a coat of prickly armour, spining 

 it as she spines the hedgehog or bristles the " woolly 

 bear." The cinnabar caterpillar seems more sensitive 

 than the full-grown caterpillars of the peacock butter- 

 fly ; but its conduct, when shaken or assaulted by 

 finger or twig, is slightly different from that of the 

 baby caterpillars of the peacock butterfly. When it 

 drops off the ragwort leaf it always lies in the same 



