Such appears to be the history of the entire vegetable kingdom." Dr. J. C. Arthur, in his interesting work entitled "The Sagacity and Morality of Plants," says: "I have tried to show that all organisms, even to the very simplest, whether plant or animal, from the very nature of life and the struggle for its maintenance, must be endowed with conscious feeling, pleasure and pain being its simplest expression. I have been told in Java, as one walks through a tangle of sensitive plants, they will drop down in their deprecating way for yards on either side, as if suddenly aroused into life, only to be again transformed into lifeless sticks by some unseen power. * * * The physical basis of life, Protoplasm, is the same for plants as for animals. The first differentiated or modified form of this we meet is the curious animalcule called Amoeba. As we watch its movements we cannot refrain from ascribing to it some dim consciousness of the life it leads. But amoeboid structure is common even in the lowest kinds of plants, and amoeboid movements can be seen in some of its tissues. Witness also the habits and intelligent movements of the zoospores of sea-weed and many other Algae, and the locomotion of the antherozoa of mosses, ferns, etc. Not many years ago these objects were classed as animals, and nobody doubted these so-called animals behaved consciously and intelligently. * * * Nothing can be more marked than the likes and dislikes of plants. Human beings can hardly express the same feelings more decidedly. There is perhaps even a 'messmateship' among plants, which inclines species to prefer to grow in company. Hosts of common plants perform actions which, if they were done by human beings, would at once be brought into the category of right and wrong. There is hardly a virtue or a vice which has not its counterpart in the actions of the vegetable kingdom . As regards conduct in this respect, there is small difference between the lower animals and plants." One of the most elementary manifestations of consciousness , and conscious action, in plant life is what has been called "the gravity sense," or the sense by which the plant recognizes the "up and down" direction of growth. The germinating seed always sends its roots downward, no matter how the seed may be placed in the ground. This cannot be held to result merely from the action of gravitation, for the sprouts move upward and away from the centre of gravity just as truly as the roots move downward and toward it. Experiments have proven that this "sense of direction" is as much a true sense as that of any of the special senses of the lowly animal life-forms. The experiment has been tried of turning around a sprouting seed, the result being that in a day or so the roots will be again found to be turning downward and the sprouts turning upward. A French botanist, named Duhamel, once placed some beans in a cylinder filled with moist earth. After they had begun to sprout, he turned the cylinder a little to one side. The next day he turned it a little further in the same direction. Each day he would turn it a little more, until finally it had described several full circles. Then he took out the plant, and shaking off the clinging earth, he found that the beans’ roots and sprouts had described circles—two perfectly formed spirals being shown, one of the tiny roots and the other of the tiny sprouts. The roots in their constant endeavor to move downward had formed one perfect spiral, while the sprouts in the constant effort to rise upward had described another perfect spiral. No amount of effort will cause the roots of a plant to grow upward, or its sprouts to grow downward. Each, root and sprout, has its own "sense of direction" to which it faithfully and invariably responds. In the same way, and from a similar cause, the tendrils of climbing plants will faithfully move toward the nearby support, and if they are untwined they will return during the next night to the old support, if possible. Moving pictures, carefully prepared, and taken over a long period, show that the movements of these tendrils to be akin to the movements of the limbs of an animal—the feelers and graspers of the octopus for example.

Now, on the man who proposes the question denying that plants are animals, we shall show that he affirms what contradicts himself. For, having...

The Plane of Plant Mind, in its seven sub-divisions, comprises the states or conditions of the entities comprising the kingdoms of the Plant World,...

But Aristotle, while he thinks that plants are possessed of a life of vegetation and nutrition, does not consider it proper to call them animals; for ...

And then the name animal was reduced to definition, for the sake of perspicuity. But having discovered that it is distinguished from what is not an an...

On the whole earth plants grew up like hair upon the heads of men.

First he appeared in the class of inorganic things, For years he lived as one of the plants, Remembering naught of his inorganic state so different;...

Those that deny the happy life to the plants on the ground that they lack sensation are really denying it to all living things. By sensation can be...

And of things without life, plants, they say, are moved by transposition in order to growth, if we will concede to them that plants are without life. ...

In like manner even as the animals, with grain of fifty and five species and twelve species of medicinal plants, have arisen from the primeval ox,...

Of the corporeal thus brought into being by Nature the elemental materials of things are its very produce, but how do animal and vegetable forms...

The above diagram illustrates a curious experiment in plant magnetism reproduced with several other experiments in Athanasius Kircher's rare volume...

We may now take the various specific types of Motion, such as locomotion, and once again enquire for each one whether it is not to be divided on the...

For in the divine pomp go forth likewise all manner of sprouting and vegetation of trees, plants and all manner of fruit; and every one bears its own ...

Further, Demosthenes having said, "For to all of us death is a debt," and so forth, Phanocles writes in Loves, or The Beautiful: "But from the Fates'...

Let him, then, say what he wants to learn. Is it whether what is in the womb grows and is nourished, or is it whether it possesses any sensation or...

But seeing all the creatures and vegetables were created before the time of man, therefore the fault ought not to be laid upon man; for man gat not th...

From It, both all living creatures and plants draw their life and nourishment; and whether you speak of intellectual, or rational, or sensible, or...

O, dear man, view thyself for a while in this looking-glass; thou wilt find it more largely to be read of concerning the creation of man. This I set...

Certain plants, minerals, and animals have been sacred among all the nations of the earth because of their peculiar sensitiveness to the astral...

The concept that all life originates from seeds caused grain and various plants to be accepted as emblematic of the human spermatozoon, and the tree...