inexplicable movements as indications of a distinct personal life.
Hence, as Darwin in his "Movements of Plants" remarks: "why a touch,
slight pressure, or any other irritant, such as electricity, heat, or
the absorption of animal matter, should modify the turgescence of the
affected cells in such a manner as to cause movement, we do not know.
But a touch acts in this manner so often, and on such widely distinct
plants, that the tendency seems to be a very general one; and, if
beneficial, it might be increased to any extent." If, therefore, one of
the most eminent of recent scientific botanists confessed his inability
to explain this strange peculiarity, we may excuse the savage if he
regard it as another proof of a distinct personality in plant life.
Thus, some years ago, a correspondent of the _Botanical Register_,
describing the toad orchis (_Megaclinium bufo_), amusingly spoke as
follows of its eccentric movements: "Let the reader imagine a green
snake to be pressed flat like a dried flower, and then to have a road of
toads, or some such speckled reptiles, drawn up along the middle in
single file, their backs set up, their forelegs sprawling right and
left, and their mouths wide open, with a large purple tongue wagging
about convulsively, and a pretty considerable approach will be gained to
an idea of this plant, which, if Pythagoras had but known of it, would
have rendered all arguments about the transmigration of souls
superfluous." But, apart from the vein of jocularity running through
these remarks, such striking vegetable phenomena are scientifically as
great a puzzle to the botanist as their movements are to the savage, the
latter regarding them as the outward visible expression of a real inward
personal existence.

But, to quote another kind of sympathy between human beings and certain
plants, the Cingalese have a notion that the cocoa-nut plant withers
away when beyond the reach of a human voice, and that the vervain and