ANIMAL AND PLANT INTELLIGENCE 



across the desert face of the rock? I have always 

 supposed a growing root lived off the country it 

 traveled over, but in this case it must have been 

 fed from the rear ; the tree pushed it on even when 

 it brought in no supplies. How interesting it would 

 be to know how far this root would have traveled 

 across that bare rock-face had the ground been 

 many yards away ! Have trees more wit than is 

 dreamed of in our philosophy ? 



The intelligence of the plants and flowers of 

 which Maeterlinck writes so delightfully is, of 

 course, only a manifestation of the general intelli- 

 gence that pervades all nature. Maeterlinck is 

 usually sound upon his facts, however free and 

 poetic he may be in the interpretation of them. 

 The plants and flowers certainly do some wonder- 

 ful things; they secure definite ends by definite 

 means and devices, as much so as does man him- 

 self — witness the elaborate and ingenious mechan- 

 ical contrivances by which the orchids secure cross- 

 fertilization. Yet if we are to use terms strictly, we 

 can hardly call it intelligence in the human sense, 

 that is, the result of reflection on the part of the 

 plant itself, any more than we can ascribe the 

 general structure and economy of the plant, or of 

 our own bodies, to an individual act of intelligence. 



There are ten thousand curious and wonderful 

 things in both the animal and vegetable worlds, and 

 in the organic world as well, but it is only in a poetic 

 175 



