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Nature Notes: 
THE SELBORNE SOCIETT'S MAGAZINE. 
No. 217. JANUARY, 1908. Vol. XIX. 
AUTOMATIC AND INDUCED MOVEMENTS IN 
THE ORGANS AND PARTS OF PLANTS. 
ILt'SXijOST persons, be they young or old, are attracted by 
Si motion, either in sentient animals or merely in 
machinery ; and those who make it their business 
^ ■ to organise exhibitions soon learn that the great attrac- 
tion is machinery in motion, while it is clear that horse-racing, 
motor-car racing, cricket and football are attractive to the multi- 
tude because of the active motion inseparable from them. 
The object of this paper will be to call the attention of 
gardeners, and any who take pleasure in the thousands of living 
plants which are scattered so lavishly about our paths, to their 
life-history, which is quite a sealed book to tlie great majority, 
though it is intensely interesting and fascinating when once 
entered upon as a study. 
The first portion, dealing with the lower forms of plant life, 
will need the aid of a microscope to observe minutely, but this 
need be no hindrance now that a good instrument can be pur- 
chased for a few pounds, while those dealt with in the second 
part can be seen and studied without any extraneous aid to 
vision, though a simple pocket lens is often a great help. 
The period of greatest activity in animals is early youth, and 
we shall find that in many plants, particularly those belonging 
to the lowest great division of the vegetable kingdom, this is also 
true. 
The presence or absence of movement used to be considered 
as the most decisive difference between plants and animals, and 
consequently most of the minute organisms that were seen in 
hurried activity in a drop of pond water were described as 
animals and so named by the earlier users of the microscope. 
This conclusion was very excusable considering the power and 
penetration of the microscopes then in use, and it was not till 
the perfecting of the achromatic compound microscope that 
