FLOWERS AND INSECTS 131 



blossoms. Again, how is it accounted 

 for? 



Equally curious with the sports are the 

 exhibitions of plant intelligence. Climb- 

 ing vines generally exercise a good caution 

 as to the way they will support themselves. 

 They act almost as shrewdly as animals. 

 But now and then they are fooled. A 

 sweet-pea in our yard caught a loose end 

 of string that was fluttering from the fence ; 

 but finding, after one of its tendrils had 

 taken about five turns at the very end 

 that it had no stability, it lengthened 

 and strengthened the tendril into a kind 

 of stem that held this string at arm's 

 length, so it might delude no other branch. 

 And the satisfaction that a plant seems to 

 feel when it gets where it wants to be must 

 extend itself to the beholder. A lantana 

 that I bought of a huckster as a common- 

 place bit of greenery spread into a bush 

 five feet wide and full of bloom in a 

 piece of dry, poor, sun-heated soil. And 

 I can't help thinking that men would be a 

 good deal like our lantana, only they hate 

 to leave their greenhouse, the city, and 



