trees, the plants, and the flowers, possess
this one sense— and who can prove that
they do not?—  may we not reasonably
suppose that some degree of intelligence
and capacity for pleasure and pain go along
with it?

Being a systematic man, though a very
busy one, I always find that I have time
to spare for my amusement.  I also find
that my amusement often assumes the
shape of a new variety of work. In this
manner I have become a student of natural
history; and whenever I walk in my garden,
through the green lanes and country roads,
over the meadow path, or through the woods
of England, or up the bens and down the
glens of Scotland, I always discover
something to interest me in the phenomena of
Nature, animate and inanimate.  I have
educated my eyes as well as my mind, in
remembrance of the sage maxim, " that in
every object there is inexhaustible meaning;
and that the eye always sees what the eye
brings means of seeing.  " Last summer
in my garden, I made the acquaintance
of a very respectable, and as I found
reason to believe, a very intelligent plant,
and studied its growth and its movements
during two or three weeks. The
plant was Cucurbita ovifera, known to
market gardeners, cooks, and housekeepers,
as the vegetable marrow.  This, like all of its
genus, will creep along the ground if it find
nothing up which it can climb; but if there
be a tree, a branch, a pole, or a wall, within
easy reach, it will infallibly make its way
to it, and twine its tendrils round the most
available points of support. The vegetable
marrow, like the vine, the hop, the briony,
and all other varieties of the genus vitis—
to use the words of Barry Cornwall, applied
to her more renowned sister the grape
vine:

          A roamer is she
          O'er wall and tree,
         And sometimes very good company.

I noticed that this particular plant extended
its tendrils—let me call them for the nonce
its hands and fingers— outward, and away
from the trunk of a hazel, and from a box-
hedge of about seven feet high, and towards
a gravel path.  It persevered in extending
itself in this direction for three days, after
I first began to take notice of it; but on
the fourth morning I perceived that it had
changed the course which its tendrils were
pursuing, and had turned them in the
contrary direction towards the box-hedge.
In two days more, it had securely fastened
itself to the hedge with its vagrant tendrils,
and put forth new shoots a short distance
higher up, with which also in due time
it enveloped the supporting tree, which,
for the first portion of its life, it had
sought in the wrong direction. Another
marrow, further removed from all support,
had also put forth its feelers towards the
gravel path; but finding nothing to lay
hold of, turned them back in a similar
manner; but like the first one, only to meet
with a disappointment.  The marrow,
however, made the best of unfavourable
circumstances, as a wise man or a wise plant
should do, and meeting with the tendrils
of a sister or a brother marrow engaged in
the like pursuit of a prop, under difficulties,
they both resolved apparently that, as union
was strength, they would twist around each
other.  And they did so.  After they had
been intertwined for a day, I deliberately
and very tenderly untwisted them, with
such care as not to injure the delicate
tendrils, and laid them apart on the ground.
In less than twenty-four hours, they had
found each other out again, and twisted
their slender cords together in a loving, or
a friendly, or at least a mutually supporting,
union. Much interested in these
enterprising marrows, I tried some
experiments with another climbing plant, the
scarlet-runner.  I untwisted one that had
grown to the height of about a foot up the
pole which had been placed for its reception,
and twisted it carefully round another
pole, which I stuck into the ground at
a distance of about an inch from the old
one. The scarlet-runner, however, had a
will of its own, and would not cling to the
new pole, unless I would tie it, which would
have ruined the experiment.  I therefore
left the plant to itself to do as it pleased;
and two days afterwards I found it on
its original pole, twined securely around
it.  I repeated this experiment several times
afterwards, with briony and hop, and
always discovered that the only means to
make a creeper creep, or a climber climb,
in a direction different from that which it
had already taken, was to tie or fasten it;
if left freely to itself, it persisted in carrying
out its original intention. Is this
intelligence or instinct; or is it merely
mechanical action? During the same
season, I had occasion to remark that
several climbing roses in front of my
cottage seemed sickly.  On investigating the
cause of their ill health, I discoverd that
the soil in which they grew was very poor,
and consisted merely of a thin layer of
earth, over the chalk; that their roots had