( 102 ) 
[January, 
NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants. By Charles 
Darwin, F.R.S. Second Edition. London : Murray. 
Even in the woodlands and hedge-rows of so-called temperate 
regions, climbing plants form a striking feature. Their graceful 
forms, the ease with which they are adapted to decorative 
purposes, and a certain weird character, which they seem to 
share with the serpent tribe, appeal at once to our aesthetic and 
imaginative faculties. But on a closer scrutiny we find that they 
afford at least an equal scope for the spirit of scientific inquiry. 
The first point which strikes even the cursory observer is the 
diversity of means by which the common objedt of deriving sup- 
port from other plants or from inanimate substances is attained. 
We see plants with long flexible shoots which merely scramble 
over and through bushes, supporting themselves by their side- 
twigs, their leaves, or their prickles. Familiar instances of this 
may be found in brambles. These scramblers stand on the 
debateable land of climbing plants. If support is to be found 
they accept it in a rough way. But if not, they form independent 
bushes. Then we find root-climbers, of which the ivy may serve 
as an illustration. From its twigs it sends out broad, flattened 
roots, which attach themselves to every crevice and irregularity 
of the surface up which the ivy is climbing. Hence it is admirably 
adapted for covering the faces of rocks, walls, or the trunks of 
thick trees. Next come the true twiners, which twist spirally 
around any objedt which they are able to grasp, but are quite 
unfit to cling to a flat surface. The hop and the common bind- 
weed, as well as its garden congener the “ morning glory,” are 
types of this class. Lastly, we have plants which, like the vine 
and the pea, climb by means of special organs for laying hold of 
any suitable objedL The next point which must have struck 
every observer even slightly versed in plant-lore is that climbers 
do not form or belong to any one botanical order or group 
of orders, but appear scattered through the whole vegetable 
kingdom. 
Such, we may say, was the state of popular knowledge on the 
subject when Mr. Darwin entered upon the researches which 
form the matter of the work before us. He does not, however, 
profess to be the first scientific investigator of the phenomena 
presented by climbing plants. When his observations were more 
than half completed he learned that the “ spontaneous revolu- 
tions of the stems and tendrils of climbing plants had been 
observed by Palm and Hugo von Mohl ” as far back as 1827, and 
had been again investigated by Dutrochet in 1843. We may 
