Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/316

 THE WILL IN NATURE.

on a peg, with a small plank placed near it, was induced to germinate. It soon began to send out shoots towards the plank, which it reached in five days without having communicated the slightest movement to the needle. The stems of onions and leeks with their bulbs, deposited in dark places, grow upwards, although more slowly than in light ones: they grow upwards even if placed in water: a fact which suffices to prove that neither light nor moisture determines the direction of their growth." Still C. H. Schultz asserts l that he made seeds germinate in a dark box with holes bored in the bottom, and succeeded in inducing the plants to grow upside down, by means of a mirror fastened to the box, which reflected the sun light.

In the ''Dictionnaire des Sciences Naturelles" (article "Animal") we find: "If, on the one hand, animals show avidity in their search after nourishment as well as power of discrimination in the selection of it, roots of plants may, on the other hand, be observed to direct themselves towards the side where the soil contains most nourishment, nay, even to seek out the smallest crevices in rocks which may contain any food. If we twist a bough so as to make the upper surface of its leaves the under one, these leaves even will twist their stems in order to regain the position best suited for the exercise of their functions (i.e. so as to have the smooth side uppermost). Is it quite certain that this takes place unconsciously ?"

F. J. Meyen has devoted a chapter, entitled "Of the movements and sensations of plants," to a full investigation of the subject now before us. In this he says 2 : "Not unfrequently potatoes, stored in deep, dark cellars,

1 C. H. Schultz, Sur la Circulation dans les Plantes, an Académie des Sciences prize-essay, 1839.

8 F. J. F. Meyen, Neues System der Pflanzenphysiologie (1839), vol. iii, p. 585.

PHYSIOLOGY