JANUARY 21 



an extreme example of the pathetic fallacy, he quoted 

 the exquisite lines from Maud 



' There has fallen a splendid tear 



From the passion-flower at the gate. 

 The red rose cries, " She is near, she is near ! " 



And the white rose weeps, " She is late." 

 The larkspur listens, " I hear, I hear ! ' 



And the lily whispers, " I wait." ' 



But the tendency is far older than Tennyson, or even 

 than Darwin's Loves of the Plants. There is Jotham's 

 scathing parable of the trees electing a king (Judges ix. 8) ; 

 there is the noble Song of the Children, ' Oh, all ye green 

 things upon the earth, bless ye the Lord ; praise Him and 

 magnify Him for ever'; there is Isaiah's verse, 'The 

 mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing, 

 and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.' All 

 these, and hundreds more, may be dismissed as mere 

 imagery ; but what if it turn out that there be truth at 

 the bottom of it ? as Mr. Clarke Nuttall affirms. Plants 

 and animals both ' live ' ; the life of both may be traced 

 backwards from the highest level attained by each through 

 infinite gradations till we arrive at a mere mass of proto- 

 plasm, which may still be pronounced to be either animal 

 or vegetable. 'But if we peer still further into the 

 mysteries of elemental life we find that, out beyond the 

 simplest plant and out beyond the simplest animal, there 

 yet lies a kind of no-man's land inhabited by mysterious 

 organisms the Myxomycetes of none of which can we 

 say " This is a plant " or " That is an animal " without our 

 assertion being challenged.' The suggestion is strong 

 that the vital principle is identical in animals and 

 vegetables, and that, widely as the two streams have 



