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- 
153 
