72 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



deodars (which cluster most richly about Nachar) 

 may well strike with awe by their wonderful union 

 of grandeur and perfect beauty. In the dog and the 

 elephant we often see a devotion so touching, and 

 the stirring of an intellect so great and earnest as 

 compared with its cruel narrow bounds, that we are 

 drawn towards them as to something almost sur- 

 passing human nature in its confiding simplicity and 

 faithful tenderness. No active feeling of this kind 

 can be called forth by the innumerable forms of 

 beauty which rise around us from the vegetable 

 world. They adorn our gardens and clothe our hill- 

 sides, giving joy to the simplest maiden, yet directing 

 the winds and rains, and purifying the great expanses 

 of air. So far as humanity, so dependent upon them, 

 is concerned, they are silent ; no means of communi- 

 cation exist between us ; and silently, unremon- 

 strantly, they answer to our care or indifference for 

 them, by reproducing, in apparently careless abun- 

 dance, their more beautiful or noxious forms. But 

 we cannot say that they are not sentient, or even 

 conscious, beings. The expanding of flowers to the 

 light, and the contraction of some to the touch, 

 indicate a highly sentient nature ; and in the slow, 

 cruel action of carnivorous plants, there is some- 

 thing approaching to the fierce instincts of the brute 

 world. Wordsworth, than whom no poet more pro- 

 foundly understood the life of nature, touched on this 

 subject when he said 



