The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-05-20
THE INTELLIeENcE or PLANTS.

by no means unerring, has long been accus-
toned to deny the possession of the same
faculty to all inferior animals. He has, how
ever, been graciously pleased to allow that
these animals possess something else, which
he calls instinct This answers almost az
well as reason for guiding them to the happi-
ness and maintenance Of their lives and the
propagation of their species. Whatever be
the exact difference between reason and in
stinct (Which has been rather a puzzling
matter for philosophers in all ages), and how
ever much or however little of either faculty
may be possessed by men and animals,
be the latter large as elephants, eagles,
and whales, or small as mice, butterflies,
or animalcule, man clearly admits that
these creatures have a certain degree
Of intelligence which is useful to them. He
will not, however, admit this to be true in
the case of plants and vegetables, whether as
regards reason, instinct, or any minor degree
of intelligence. The great naturalist, Lin
n@us although he was the first to declare
that plants and flowers, as well as animals,
are male and female-a discovery which one
would suppose might have led him to acknow-
ledge sensation, if not intelligence, in these
living beings-says, in defining the differences
between the mineral, vegetable, and animal
Kingdoms Minerals grow; vegetables grow
and live; animals live, grow, and feel"
other words he asserts that the men,
bers of the vegetable world do not ''feel"
Another and more recentl definition sets forth
that "a plant is an organized being, uncon-
scious of its own existence, fed by inorganic
substances which it extracts from air or
water, according to laws independent of the
formul@ of organic chemistry, by the help
Of a faculty dependent on vital force
Are thesel ideas just, and these definitions
correct2 think not, and have been led
by observation to believe that plants are
conscious of their own existence; and that
they are endowed, not only with feeling or
sensation, but with intelligence in such
degree as is sufficient to make life pleasant to
them, and enable them to take proper mea-
sures for its preservation.
If the oyster fastened on the rock can feel,
why not the rose or the convolvulus, or the
great oak tree that is fast rooted in the
ground? Of the glow of the sunshine, or the
freshness of the rain and the mir, are they not
pleased recipients? Who can tell Or who
shall deny, and give good reason for his in
credulity? Who however learned he NAV
be, can decide where animal life ends and
where vegetable life begins? What, for in
stance, is sponge? And if, as Linneus says,
plants have no feeling, what makes the mi
mosa, or sensitive plant, shrink SO timidly
from the slightest TOUCH and apparently with
such pain or terror from a ruder blow
Whether I am scientifically and philosophi
cally right OF wrong, l take pleasure in be-
ueVlDB tnat
.'To everything that lives,
The kind Creator gives
Share OF enjoyment"
and that the possession of life, in however
lntinitesimal degree, presupposes in its
possessor, whether animal or vegetable, a
faculty of sensation that administers to it's
happiness, and that may consequently ad-
minister to its suffering. For, pleasure and
pain are twins, and the one is not attainable
until hnr1f nkI - - H. ~
not new to poetry, though not accepted by
science. 1t blooms and sparkles in the grace
full mythology of Greece, and the somewhat
less graceful mythology of Rome; as all who
remember the Dryads and Hamadyrads; the
loves of Apollo for Laura, Daphne, land
Acantha or who at school or college have
pored over the metaphors of Ovid will
readily admit. The Oriental poets of India
and Persia delighted to animate the flowers
and trees, and, according to Hafiz the rose
appreciates the tender melodies of her lover
the nightingale. Greek superstition endowed
the atropa mandragora with all the sensations
of an animal, and believed that it shrieked
with pain when its roots were wrested from
the ground.
Science may laugh at all such notions, but
Science, though very great and learned
lady, does not yet know everything. Her
elder sister, Poetry, often sees further and
deeper into things than she does. Did not
Shakespeare, in the Tempest, foreshadow the
possibility of the electric telegraph more than
two hundred years before Wheatstone Did
not DIR. Erasmus Darwin, long in advance of
James Watt and Robert Stephenson, predict
the steamship and the locomotive engine
Did not Coleridge, in the ''Ancient Mariner"
explain the m0dus operandt of the then un-
suspected atmospheric railway?
On the question of the intelligence of
plants, my convictions as well as my SYM
pathies go with the poets rather than with
the scientific men. l know that the trees
and the flowers, inasmuch as they live, are
my fellow-creatures, and are the children of
the same God as myself. Like myself, they
may be endowed with the faculty, though
possibly in much fainter degree than mine,
OF enjoying the world in which His love and
goodness have placed both them and me.
They breathe, they perspire, they sleep, they
feed themselves and may be over-fed; thew
are male and female. If science admits all
these facts, how can it logically stop short at
such a definition as that of Linneus, and
deny them sensation? Darwin, in his philo-
sophical poem, the Botanic Garden (not much
read in the present day., fancifully describes
the loves of the flowers, and imagines, not
perhaps wrongly, that love-making may be as
agreeable to them as it is to higher organiza-
tions-
What beaux and beauties crowd the gaudy groves,
And WOO and win their vegetable loves!
Here snOwdrops cold and blue-eyed harebells blend
Ihelr tender tears as o'er the stream they bend
The love sick violet and the primrose pale
BON BOW their sweet heads and whisper to the gale;
With secret signs, the virgin lily droops,
And Jealous cowslips hang their tawny cups,
Ana tne e young & rose, IN beautys damask pride,
Drinks the warm bushes OF his bashful bride;
With honey lips, enamored Woodbines meet
Clasp WIN Iond arms, and mix their kisses sweet