MENTALITY AND SPIRITUALITY 195 
“When plants find themselves in extraordinary 
positions, they often do things which seem to be 
something more than cases of cause and effect.” 
The inherent nature of plants may account for 
their regular habits of living; but only some mental 
suggestion can account for their abandonment of 
the regular and their adoption of the irregular. 
This physical sense, the sense of the fitness of 
things, has its origin not in instinct but in intellect 
—i a reasoning power. 
One of the most striking examples of reasoning 
action in plant life is cited by an American woman, 
Mrs. Treat, who proved conclusively that the leaves 
of the plant actually were conscious of the nearness 
of insects, even when there was no contact between 
the plant and the body of the insect. This was 
demonstrated by pinning a live fly half an inch 
from a leaf of sundew, whereupon the leaf moved 
itself within the succeeding two hours near enough 
to fasten its tentacles about the insect. Perhaps 
this realisation of the insect’s proximity was a mat- 
ter of “passive” mentality, of hearing, or seeing, or 
smelling, or a psychic sense; but the voluntary mo- 
tion toward it cannot fairly be attributed to any 
source other than to a degree of reasoning power 
and a definite understanding of the circumstances, 
on the part of the plant. 
