could not talk words, but it could talk
things.

This is not so very absurd. If the things in
nature be not sensible, they certainly are not
stupid. Look at a tree or a shrub. Bonuet
used to say that at the end of all his study
he could not see the difference between a
cat and a rosebush. Let us see what the
wits are that a rosebush has. Look at its
leaves, with their smooth glittering surface
turned to the sky; but their under-surfaces,
all soft and full of pores, open to catch the
moisture rising from the soil—half-open when
they need only a little, closed when they
want none. The rain that falls upon the
waxy roof made by the upper surface of the
foliage runs off, and is dropped into the
ground just over the sucking ends of all the
rootlets. Turn some of those rose-leaves
upside down. Lay a cat on her back, and
she will not consent to remain in that
unnatural position. The rose-leaf, too, objects to
be inverted. A man may bend a branch so
that its leaves all hang with the wrong side
upwards; but let him watch it. He will
observe how all the little leaves slowly and very
carefully begin to turn upon their stems. At
the end of a few hours every leaf will have
brought round its polished surface to the
light, and be holding its open mouths again
over the ground for drink.

Is the plant stupid? It knows what it
wants and likes, and if that be within reach
will get it. Put the rose-tree into soil with
dry bad earth on its right hand and rich soil
upon its left. You will not find it suffering
its roots to be long in the dark about the
trick that has been played them. They start
out of course as usual, and as the mail-coaches
used to do, in all directions; but those that
begin their journey through poor dust
receive in a mysterious way some information
of the better land that is to be found by travel
in a contrary direction. Accordingly they all
turn back to follow their companions who
have gone into the richer pasturage.
Propose to put those roots into jail, by digging a
trench round the tree, or sinking a stone wall
into the earth around it. The rootlets dive
into the ground until they have reached the
bottom of the obstacle, then pass it, and run
up again until they find the level that best
pleases them.

Who will now undertake to say that a
plant is not sensible? Let Sophia go into
the fields, and she will tread upon a multitude
of flowers that know better than she
does herself which way the wind blows,
what o'clock it is, and what is to be thought
about the weather. The calendula arvensis
opens in fine weather, and shuts up when
rain is coming. The sonchus sibiricus shuts
up at the end of each day's business, but
only remains tranquilly asleep when she
has no doubts at all about the morrow,
when she knows it will be fine. Let a
traveller seek shelter from the sun under
an acacia with thorns white as ivory, called
by Linnaeus the mimosa eburnia. The dark
shade on the sand perhaps becomes
suddenly dotted with light; he looks up and
observes that his parasol is shutting itself up;
that every leaf is putting itself to bed. If he
will look closely he may observe, too, that
the leaves sleep by the dozen in a bed, nestling
together in small heaps. The traveller has
nothing to complain about; he does not need
the shade; there is a cloud over the sun.
The tree thinks—one is almost obliged to say,
the tree thinks—that perhaps it will come
on to rain. There is no reason why its whole
roots should not be watered in the arid soil,
and there is no reason why its leaves, delicately
set on slender stems, should be beaten from
their holdings. The leaves, therefore, are
shut up and drawn together in small bundles,
that they may find in union the strength
which in isolation they do not possess: while
at the same time room is left for the rain to
pass between them to water the roots.

There is not an hour of the day that is not
the beloved hour of some blossom, which
to it alone opens her heart. Linnaeus
conceived the pleasant notion of a flower clock.
Instead of a rude metal bell to thump the
hour, there is a little flower bell ready to
break out at three o'clock; a flower star that
will shine forth at four; and a cup, perhaps,
will appear at five o'clock, to remind
old-fashioned folk that it is tea-time. Claude
Lorraine, although he did not make a clock of
four-and-twenty flowers in his garden, was a
landscape painter most familiar with nature;
and when he was abroad he could at any
time know what o'clock it was by asking the
time of the flowers of the field. It would
have been of no use for him to ask a cat.
The peasants of Auvergne and Languedoc all
have at their doors beautiful barometers, in
which there is no glass, quicksilver or joiner's
work. They were furnished by the flowers.

Let me put a spider into any lady's hand.
She is aghast. She shrieks. The nasty ugly
thing! Madam, the spider is perhaps shocked
at your Brussels laces; and, although you
may be the most exquisite miniature painter
living, the spider has a right to laugh at your
coarse daubs as she runs over them. Just
show her your crochet work when you shriek
at her. "Have you spent half your days,"
the spider, if she be spiteful, may remark,
"have you spent half your days upon the
clumsy anti-macassars and these ottoman
covers? My dear lady, is that your web? If
I were big enough, I might with reason drop
you and cry out at you. Let me spend a day
with you and bring my work. I have four
little bags of thread, such little bags! In
every bag there are more than a thousand
holes, such tiny, tiny holes! Out of each
hole thread runs, and all the threads—more
than four thousand threads—I spin together
as they run, and when they are all spun, they
make but one thread of the web I weave. I