Convention—eemarkable trees and plants, iso 
the margin long, stiff hairs, and having on its upper surface many 
small glands, or bladders, and three irritable hairs on each side. If 
the insect touches one of these hairs, or organs of feeling, the two 
sides of the leaf immediately fold together, the marginal hairs 
holding it so firm that the prisoner cannot escape. The leaf will 
not open again until the insect is dead and all motion ceases. Dar¬ 
win, and other eminent scholars, startle us by asserting that this 
wonderful plant has the power of absorbing and digesting its prey. 
If this be true, the all-absorbing question of to-day is: Where does 
animal life begin? Is it in the plant? The general laws which 
govern life prevail in plants as in animals. If the plant has power 
to digest the insects, it must have some sense of feeling; if it has 
the sense of pleasure, it has also that of pain, as the two are insep¬ 
arable. Is it feeling that causes the sensitive plant to drop to the 
ground when touched by the hand? Who will explain the strange 
phenomenon of sleep in plants, as we see it in the clover field be¬ 
fore sunrise, when every leaf is closed? Greek superstition en¬ 
dowed the atropa mandragora with all the sensations of an ani¬ 
mal, and believed that it shrieked with pain when its roots were 
wrested from the ground. 
A correspondent of the English Mechanic gives his exj^erience 
with music, as a medicine for unhealthy plants. He had a harmon- 
icum removed to the green house, and indulged freely in music for 
some months. He says: “I was surprised to observe a gradual, 
yet rapid recovery of health on the part of my plants, and have 
thought it quite possible to impute it to the influence of music.” 
He further says: “Nature is not complete without music — the 
songs of birds especially.” If his story be true, we can believe ac¬ 
cording to Hafiz, that “the rose appreciates the tender melodies of 
her lover, the nightingale.” We love to think that in the spicy 
perfume of the morning breeze, the millions of flowers that grow in 
valleys, deep dells, and over mountain sides, have some faculty 
of expression — perhaps is wafted through each other’s senses, 
a language of love, the comprehension of which will to us be a 
heaven of delight, when we are taken to the beautiful garden above. 
