Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/59

Rh of independent observers, have up to the present time been almost ignored.

More recently, however, they have been repeatedly verified: in Germany, by Nilschke, in 1860; in this country by L. A. Millington, a correspondent of the American Naturalist, April, 1868; by Mrs. Treat, of New Jersey, American Journal of Science, November, 1871, and American Naturalist, December, 1873; by Mr. A. W. Bennett, at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1873.

It is noticeable that all of these observers unite in reporting one erroneous conclusion, namely, that the movements do not result when inorganic substances are placed upon the leaves. Darwin's experiments show that although the effect is not so great and the substances are not so long detained, yet such bodies as bits of cinder do possess the power of irritation.

Mrs. Treat also reported that, when a living fly was pinned at a distance of half an inch from the leaves of the D. filiformis, the leaves bent toward it and reached it in an hour and twenty minutes. Mr. Darwin was not only unable to obtain any similar results, but, to admit that this motion was any thing other than an accident, would compel him to adopt some other theory than the one he now holds to account for the transmission of the impulse to motion.

Reference may here be made to a remarkable statement in a note of M. Ziegler to the Paris Academy of Sciences, in 1872. He says: "In studying these remarkable plants, I noticed that all the albuminoid animal substances, if held for a moment between the fingers, acquired the property of making the hairs of the Drosera contract. I also observed that such substances, when they had not been in contact with a living animal, had no visible action on the hairs. This shows that the simple contact of the fingers communicates to inert animal substances a property which they did not possess before." Repeated experiments, in which every precaution was taken by Mr. Darwin, seem effectually to negative this extraordinary belief of M. Ziegler.

This, then, is a brief review of the subject up to the recent publication of Mr. Darwin's book upon it. It has for some time been known, to all who have followed the question, that he was engaged in researches that would one day be published, and they have been waiting for them with eager interest. With characteristic patience and caution, it is only after fifteen years of careful investigation that he puts forth the results of the long series of observations. As one reads the book, the most vivid impression made is by the wonderful amount of painstaking labor that the record of the experiments shows. Like the artist of Kouroo, he seems to have said to himself: "Time is an ingredient that enters into no perfect work; and my work shall be perfect in all respects, though I should do nothing else in my life." And, lo!