(9) And some fell upon a rock: as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture.

(25) 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.

(100) This they drive and act so long, till all the matter is quite dried, till the sweet quality or sweet water is dried up, and then the fruit falls off, and the stalk drieth also and falleth down. And this is the End of Nature in this World.

(10) And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.

(31) Professor Bieser says: "Another plant showing irritability when touched, and possessing the faculty of finding and raising water by means of a long, slender, flat stem or tube, is a variety of orchid discovered by E. A. Suverkrop, of Philadelphia, several years ago. This plant grows upon the trunks of trees hanging over swampy places along the bank of the Rio de la Plata and streams of the neighborhood. When this orchid is in want of water, the slender stem gradually unwinds until it dips into the water. Then the stem slowly coils around and winds up to discharge upon the part of the plant from which the roots spring the water which it has sucked up into its hollow space or tube within its interior. Sometimes when water is absent from directly under this plant, the stem moves first in this direction and then in another, in its search for water, and finally finding the water it performs the process above described. If this plant is touched while the stem is extended it acts much like the sensitive plant (mimosa), and the stem coils up into a spiral more rapidly than when it is lifting water." The experiments of that wizard of plant-life, Luther Burbank, give us many illustrations of the manner in which the "mind" in the plant will respond to changed environment, and to take advantage of improved conditions thereof in the direction of adapting itself thereto. No one can study the works of modern botanists, or work long among plants, without discovering for himself many facts serving to prove that there is not only Life among the plants, but also sufficient mind to serve the purposes and needs of the existence of the plant. Some scientists have thought it possible that by changing the environment of the plant sufficiently, in the direction of calling out latent possibilities of mental action, it is probable that plants may be evolved which would approach in their mental activity that of the lower forms of animal life, if not indeed exceed the latter.

(8) but when the sun was up, because it had no depth of earth, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.

(22) The manifestation of Trophoses, or acts pertaining to nutrition, is apparent even in the case of the lowest forms of plant-life. Even the lowliest vegetable cell takes nourishment and replaces the waste products of its system by fresh material taken into its system. These activities require a very simple nervous system, often practically no nervous system at all. But, nevertheless, in every act of nutrition there is manifested not only the presence of Life, but also conscious activity of a certain degree. Even the lowest forms of plants are able to distinguish perfectly between nutritive and non-nutritive particles of matter. Most plants possess no nervous system, at least none yet discovered by science, but, nevertheless, they manifest characteristic Trophoses corresponding in degree with their necessities , but seldom exceeding those necessities.

(4) Now, on the man who proposes the question denying that plants are animals, we shall show that he affirms what contradicts himself. For, having defined the animal by the fact of its nourishment and growth, but having asserted that a plant is not an animal, it appears that he says nothing else than that what is nourished and grows is both an animal and not an animal.

(24) Arid they digged a well and they found living water.

(26) Not only have the roots of plants the general "sense of direction" which causes them to grow downward in spite of all attempts to prevent them, but they have also the "sense of moisture," which causes them to seek the direction of water. Many plants also turn their leaves and blossoms to the light, no matter how often they are turned in the opposite direction. Potatoes in dark cellars will often send forth their sprouts twenty or thirty feet in the direction of light which shows through a tiny crack in the wall. Likewise, plants possess the "sense of taste" to a very high degree in some cases. By means of this sense they are able to detect differences in substances, and to choose those substances which are conducive to their nutrition. They are able to distinguish between poor and rich soil, and also between different chemicals of differing nutritive values. They always move their roots in the direction of the best food supply, and also toward moisture. Not only do the roots of plants move in the direction of water, but instances have been cited in which the leaves of plants will bend over during the night and dip themselves in a vessel of water several inches away. Insect-eating plants recognize the difference between living animal substance and bits of inorganic matter or vegetable substance, casting off the latter two as if in disgust. Experiments have been made of placing a bit of cheese in the reach of such plants, when, though cheese is of course unfamiliar to them, they will seem to recognize its nitrogenous nature and will devour it as readily as they will a piece of flesh or the body of an insect.

(5) The tender plant, and withers all its shades;

It lies uprooted from its genial bed,

A lovely ruin now defac’d and dead.

(90) In the meanwhile the heat from without always drieth the sweet water in the stalk, and the stalk is always smaller at the top; the higher it grows the smaller it is, growing on so long till it can escape or run no farther.

(6) This, indeed, did Vajasaneya Yajnavalkya tell to his pupil Madhuka Paingya, and say: 'Even if one should pour this on a dry stump, branches would be produced and leaves would spring forth. 9- This, indeed, did Madhuka Paingya tell to his pupil Cula Bhagavitti, and say: < Even if one should pour this on a dry stump, branches would be produced and leaves would spring- forth/ ^ * _ 10. This, indeed, did Cula Bhagavitti tell to his pupil Janaki Ayasthuna, and say: 'Even if one should pour this on a dry stump, branches would be produced and leaves would spring- forth. * 5 ii. This, indeed, did Janaki Ayasthuna tell to his pupil Satyakama Jabala, and say: < Even if one should pour this on a dry stump, branches would be produced and leaves would spring forth.'

(5) And the waters disappeared from above the earth in the fifth week in the seventh year thereof, and on the seventeenth • day in the second month the earth was dry.

(46) 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' unbroken thread escape Is none for those that feed on earth." You will also find that Plato having said, "For the first sprout of each plant, having got a fair start, according to the virtue of its own nature, is most powerful in inducing the appropriate end;" the historian writes, "Further, it is not natural for one of the wild plants to become cultivated, after they have passed the earlier period of growth;" and the following of Empedo cles:

(6) As soon as we were come to where the dew Fights with the sun, and, being in a part Where shadow falls, little evaporates, Both of his hands upon the grass outspread In gentle manner did my Master place; Whence I, who of his action was aware, Extended unto him my tearful cheeks; There did he make in me uncovered wholly That hue which Hell had covered up in me. Then came we down upon the desert shore Which never yet saw navigate its waters Any that afterward had known return. There he begirt me as the other pleased; O marvellous! for even as he culled The humble plant, such it sprang up again Suddenly there where he uprooted it.

(153) Thus now the heat kindled the dried water, and the light could no more elevate and kindle itself, for the water was dried up, and was quite consumed by the fire or great heat.

(67) But if one among them lifteth up itself too high in its growth, and so withereth, because it has not sap enough, how can the earth help it? Does it not afford its sap to that as well as to the others?

(45) For in the seven years of the famine it had not overflowed and had irrigated only a few places on the banks of the river, but now it overflowed and the Egyptians sowed the land, and it bore much corn that year.

(17) The chief distinction between the intelligence and consciousness of Plants and Animals is that the former manifest almost entirely along the lines of instinctive or unconscious mentation, while the latter manifest in a steadily increasing degree purpositive and deliberate conscious activity. In the processes of the human body we find a large proportion of those performed clearly along the lines of the instinctive, unconscious vegetable kingdom. These processes come under the control and direction of the Plant Soul. They are performed on the Plane of Plant Consciousness just as truly as are the processes of the ordinary types of plant life. Some of these processes are very complex—but so are the processes involved in the life of the ordinary plant.