Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/109

Rh been fanciful, and have been forced to the conclusion that these plants possess not only nervous ganglionic centers in their leaves, but cords of communication running even to the stem, where possibly there may be the rudiments of a spinal cord communicating, may be, with other ganglia in the roots, the totality of which would represent a brain. Nuclei and tracts of special sensations (unless they be special plant sensations), apparently, they do not possess—I mean such sensations as sight and hearing. They are, to some extent, sensitive to a breath of wind when no actual contact takes place.

Men are wise in their generation—the wisdonwisdom [sic] of man is indeed a remarkable trait of the creature—but the weather wisdom and the immigration wisdom of birds are traits equally remarkable. If the bird lore is due to the accumulated experience of the race, just so much can be said also about the wisdom of man.

Man loves alcohol; man includes the teetotaler who loves alcohol also, but who most wisely refrains, as he doubts his own powers of resistance to excess. Here, possibly, there is a gulf between man and the lower animals. The lower creatures, as far as I know, never refrain from alcohol in excess, if they can get it. Many tales have been told of alcoholism in the lower animals, none of moderate drinking, if the alcohol were available; therefore, perhaps, the only great difference between man and the lower animals is that man may be a moderate alcoholist. Monkeys are peculiarly fond of arrack and such stuff. Possibly, therefore, our own love of spirits is simply an unfortunate hereditary ancestral trait.

Comparisons are at the best odious; however, the most tender of us can always console himself by remembering that the comparison between man and animals and plants is only reasonable when we descend, as far as man is concerned, to the very lowest species of humanity, and even then he has to be compared with the highest type of the creatures below him. Therefore, indeed, what magnificent creatures we are—or, anyhow, might be!

I have seen dogs and, I think, other animals gazing abstractedly at and evidently following something. They were troubled, sometimes whining, or positively crouching in awe or dread. Such behavior in a dog during the course of a long life is not uncommon, and it would be ridiculous to declare all such dogs to be rabeitic. I believe other animals suffer from illusions. I know two men with whom I have spoken, and who are reasoning, rational beings, and otherwise very practical, who are able to make a chair waltz round the room or go up-stairs without in any way, directly or indirectly, having contact with it. Having started the chair on its career, it is kept going by mere suggestion. I