PLANTS AND ANIMALS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3025, 23 October 1908, Page 4

PLANTS AND ANIMALS.

In his Presidential address to the British Association at Dublin last month, Dr. Francis Darwin, a son of the author of the "Origin of Species," attempted to bridge the gap between the animal and plant worlds by contending that plants must in certain respects be classed as animals. He recalled his father's words, that it was impossible not to be struck with the resemblance between the movements of plants and many of the actions performed unconsciously by the lower animals, and remarked that while it was impossible to know whether or not plants were conscious, it was consistent with the doctrine of continuity that in all living things there was something psychic, "and, said the Doctor, "if we accept this point of view, we must believe that in plants there exists a faint copy of what we know as coasciousness in ourselves." Dr. Darwin advanced evidence to show that plants have memory, and can develop habits, and behave differently according to what may be called their mood. He argued that there was something in plants that corresponded very nearly to the nervous system in animals, and that they were quite as sensitive to certain agencies as animnls, and quite as capable of telegraphing from one part Of the organism to another.