DO FLOWERS FEEL?

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2612, 28 July 1923, Page 1

DO FLOWERS FEEL?

A SCIENTIST'S EXPERIMENTS. Flowers are animals! They can feel, think, suffer, love, and procreate (writes Basil Woon in the “New York American”). These are the remarkable conclusions arrived at by Professor Viala, and the sum of his observations has been eon Armed! by no less an august body than the French Academy of Sciences. A Toulouse savant, who shrouds himself in anonymity because he wishes to pursue his studies undisturbed, found by actual experiment'.that the sap from a grapevine was subject to the identical chemical reactions of the blood of a rabbit. He went further. He took a dog and a sunflower, and injected into both the microbe of diphtheria. The dog and the flower both became very ill. The flower shed its blossoms and turned a jaundiced yellow; the dog lay down, refused all food, and seemed on the point of death. This was not the really remarkable thing. The savant, having established that (lowers are subject to the same diseases as humans, determined to find out whether they could be cured in the same way that humans could be cured. So he injected into the veins of the dog and into the stem of the flower, the serum which is now used universally to cure children of diphtheria. After the third injection of the serum the flower colour, straightened up, and began to take an interest in life. The dog needed two more injections before his cure was assured. “In cutting a rose are we inflicting mortal pain?” Is there a Heaven for plants, and a hell? They are questions which are certainly (losers to-day.”