Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1876 — Mind In Plants. [ARTICLE]

Mind In Plants.

’TI» iny faith that every flower —-T Knjoya the air 11 breathea." So wrote Wordsworth long ago, and very often the poet's prophetic spirit anticipates result* which slowly-demonstra-ting Science arrives at only after many years of patient observation and logical deduction, is it possible that Wordsworth's faith in the capacity of vegetation to enjoy was really such an anticipation, that lite consciousness which enjoyment presupposes is in any degree a function of plants* —r- - There is certainly a growing disposition" on the part of scientific men to accept such a position, and the evidence Jn support of it has already become too abundant to be overlooked or despised. As Dr. Forbes Winslow has remarked, vegetable life is so universally assumed to be, as a matter of course, unconscious, that it appears to many a-mere foilv to express a doubt of the correctness of the assumption. But, he continues, let a close observer and admirer of flowers watch carefully their proceedings on the assumption that they not only feel but enjoy life, and lie will be struck with the immense array of facts which may be adduced in support of it. Endow them hypothetically with consciousness, and they appear in a new and altogether different aspect. Ilis conclusion Is that they are undoubtedly in the same categoryTn fins’ respect with the lower forms of animal life, respecting which it is impossible to determine whether they have conscious’ness or not. Dr. Lander Lindsay goes further, and regards mind and all its essential or concomitant phenomena as common in various senses to plants, the lower animals and man; and he backs his belief with a cogent array of evidence, which, while it fails to demonstrate absolutely his position, shows very clearly the drift of scientifle opinion. Dr. Asa Gray, after speaking of the transmission of the excitability of sensitive plants from one part of the plant to another, the renewal of excitability by repose, and the power which the organs of plants have to surmount obstacles to positions favorable to the proper exercise of their functions, goes on to say that, when we consider in this connection the still more striking cases of spontaneous motion which the lower algae exhibit, and that all these motions are arrested by narcotic or other -poisons—the narcotic and acid poisons producing ejects upon vegetables respectively analogous to their effects upon the animal economy—we cannot avoid attributing to plants a vitality and U power of making movements toward a determinate end, not differing in nature, perhaps, from those of the lower animals. Probably, he adds with characteristic cautiousness’ life is essentially the same in the two kingdoms; and to' vegetable life faculties are superadded in the lower animals, some of which are here and there indistinctly foreshadow'ed in plants. Darwin has observed in the arosera rot undifolia a faculty for selecting its food, which in animals would certainly be attributed to volition. Mrs. Treat has described the same trait in the plant. On being deceived by means of a piece of chalk, the drosera curved its stalk glands toward it, but immediately discovering its mistake, withdrew them. The plant would bend toward a fly held within reach, enfold it, and suck its juices; but would disregard the bait if out of reach, showing not only purposive movement (or a refusal to move, as the case might warrant), but also a certain power of estimating distance. —:—--

Again, Darwin has shown that the more perfect tendril bearers among climbing plants bend toward or from the light, or disregard it, as may be most advantageous. Also,"that the tendrils of various climbers frequently attached themselves to objects presented to them experimentally, but soon withdrew on finding the support unsuitable. He says of the bignonia capreolata that its tendrils “soon recoiled.with what I can only call disgust," from a glass tube or a zinc plate, and straightened themselves. Of another bignonia, he says that the terminal part of the tendril exhibits an odd habit, which in an animal would be called an instinct, for it continually searches for any little dark hole in which to insert itself. The same tendril would frequently withdraw from one hole and insert its point in another. In like manner, spirally twining plants seem to search for proper supports, rejecting those not suitable. Speaking of phenomena of this sort, Dr. Lindsay makes this strong remark: “In carnivorous and climbing plants, there Is a choice or alternative between action or inaction, acceptance or refusal; and the choice made is not always judicious. There may be an error, and the error may be corrected; but in order to such correction, there must surely be some kind of consciousness or perception that a mistake has been committed: an exercise of will in making further efforts at success, and a knowledge of means to an end, with their proper adaptation or application.” According to Prof. Laycock, organic memory is common to both animals and plants, and certain lianas seem to exhibit in it a marked degree in their antipathy to certain trees. The botanist Brown has remarked that the trejgs which the lianas refuse to coil round are physically incapable of supporting the climbers. And not only do many plants act, as sne-might say, rwassmably,. hut .so me exhibit the opposite quality. In his “ Vegetable Physiology,” Prof. Lawson speaks of the eccentric movements of the side leaflets of hedysarwm gyrans, which make it appear as though the whole plant were actuated by a feeling of canrice. In many cases observers are, no doubt, self-deceived, and mistake a mechanical and wholly unconscious mimicry of intelligent action for an actual exhibition of intelligence; still such men as Dr. Gray and Mr, Darwin are not apt to be deluded by mimicry or figures of speech ; and however much it may run counter to popular notions of what is proper to plant life, the hypothesis that intelligence does not end with animal life seems by no means inconsistent with a multitude of trustworthy observations. - Scientific American