DO ANIMALS THINK AND REFLECT? 



than in the vegetable, and the most so of all in the 

 mind of man. 



The way the wild apple trees and the red thorn 

 trees in the pasture, as described by Thoreau, tri- 

 umph over the cattle that year after year browse 

 them down, suggests something almost like human 

 tactics. The cropped and bruised tree, not being 

 allowed to shoot upward, spreads more and more 

 laterally, thus pushing its enemies farther and 

 farther away, till, after many years, a shoot starts up 

 from the top of the thorny, knotted cone, and in one 

 season, protected by this cheval-de-frise, attains a 

 height beyond the reach of the cattle, and the victory 

 is won. Now the whole push of the large root system 

 goes into the central shoot and the tree is rapidly 

 developed. 



This almost looks like a well-laid scheme on the 

 part of the tree to defeat its enemies. But see how 

 inevitable the whole process is. Check the direct 

 flow of a current and it will flow out at the sides ; 

 check the side issues and they will push out on their 

 sides, and so on. So it is with the tree or seedling. 

 The more it is cropped, the more it branches and 

 rebranches, pushing out laterally as its vertical 

 growth is checked, till it has surrounded the central 

 stalk on all sides with a dense, thorny hedge. Then 

 as this stalk is no longer cropped, it leads the 

 tree upward. The lateral branches are starved, and 

 in a few years the tree stands with little or no evi- 

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