18709. | Instinct and Reason. IOI 
one of those beautiful bell animalcules, named Vorticella, it 
instantly darts backward as though attached to a tense elastic 
f we observe it more carefully we perceive the stem of 
the bell flower to be gathered into several spirals like a helix. 
After a while the animalcule recovers from its fear and extends 
itself, spiral after spiral being shaken out. If the vessel in which 
they are contained be jarred even, they dart quickly backward as 
if touched. After a short time they get accustomed to jars and 
the like, and a considerable shock is required to cause them to” 
withdraw into the depths of the vessel. Now here at least, some 
impression, strong enough to affect them greatly, is made upon 
these little bell-flower animalcules. If instinct be advanced to 
explain this phenomenon, then the onus of proof, as to where 
instinct ends and reason begins, belongs to the one who advances 
that idea; if reason, however small, then we must allow the con- 
sciousness of action to obtain in all the processes of nature. 
Every form of life, then, whether animal or vegetable, does but 
furnish different modes of expressing life. What is lacking in 
one is made good by approximation, so far as it is consistent with 
the needs and demands of that organism. The plant has no 
brain, no blood circulation; but the sap of the plant is pumped up 
by the rootlets throughout every part; and the circulation here 
is as perfectly established as in the animal, though in a different 
manner. For their purposes in life, then, these transitional beings 
need no complexity of nervous system, roots and sap. They would 
have no call for them in so simple an organization as they 
possess. 
Plant Life—A plant, as we understand it, is a cellular organism, 
consisting of a part below ground called the roots, and a part 
above denominated stem, branches and leaves. Parasitic plants 
have properly no roots, but, as their name implies, subsist upon 
higher vegetable forms. Air plants, fungi and lichens also belong 
to our category of plants, although differing so widely from our 
type. 
Plants, being for the most part limited in motion, shoot out 
roots in all directions beneath the ground in search of elements 
of nutrition, rear a stem aloft, push out branches and put forth 
leaves to catch the sunbeams, by means of which they decompose 
the atmosphere to obtain the proper requisites for the life, respi- 
ration, growth and vigor of that form of life. The plant never 
