THE QUARTERLY 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
JANUARY, 1876. 
I. A NEW PHASE OF PLANT-LIFE.* 
t T is interesting occasionally to look back to the time 
when Natural History, still in its unscientific stage, 
consisted of a catalogue of names, diversified, as re- 
gards zoology, with apocryphal anecdotes, stilted declama- 
tions on the nobility of the horse and the faithfulness of 
dogs, and with a fcedissima proluvies of twaddle about 
“ instinUt and reason.” Botany was a still more meagre 
study, relieved merely with notes on the supposed healing 
virtues of the species described. In those good old days we 
believed in the existence of sharply-defined genera and 
orders, not to speak of species. We thought that all beings 
were duly labelled and pigeon-holed for our more convenient 
study. -Even the time-honoured antithesis of “man and 
beast ” seemed scarcely so glaring and so fundamental as 
the contrast between animals and vegetables. We could 
not, of course, refuse to regard the latter as living beings. 
We saw them developed from a germ, growing by the ab- 
sorption and assimilation of foreign matter, secreting sub- 
stances altogether different from the nourishment taken in, 
reproducing reds similar to that from which they sprung, 
and finally decaying and being resolved into unorganised 
compounds. But we regarded them, for all this, as entirely 
passive. They were held incapable of any other motion 
than that due to the passing wind. They were supposed to 
be nourished exclusively upon whatever matter — inorganic 
or merorganic — came casually in contact with their leaves 
or rootlets, having at most the somewhat negative power of 
a veto, by refusing to take in anything useless or injurious. 
Still more decidedly were they considered as insensient, 
devoid of all feeling, — as incapable of recognising and of 
reacting upon any contact or impulse from without as are 
the very stones by the wayside. True, the movements of 
* Inse&ivorous Plants. By Charles Darwin, F.R.S. London: John 
Murray. 
VOL. VI. (N.S.) 
B 
