The Dionæa, Drosera, the Sensitive Plant, Mimulus, Barberry, and others, all show us clearly that plants somehow or other act as if they were conscious of what they ought to do. In fact, in all these cases, it is scarcely possible to help believing in some sort of rudimentary nervous system. At any rate Wordsworth comes near this belief, for he has written:—
"It is my faith, that every flower that blows
Enjoys the air it breathes."
CHAPTER XXVIII
MOSSES AND MOORS
Peat-mosses and their birds—Moorlands—Cotton-grass—Scotch whisky—Growth of peat-moss—A vegetable pump—Low-lying and moorland mosses—Eruptions and floods of peat—Colonizing by heather and Scotch fir—Peat-mosses as museums—Remains of children and troopers—Irish elk—Story of the plants in Denmark—Rhododendrons and peat—Uses of peat—Reclaiming the mosses near Glasgow.
IN Great Britain in this present year one finds exceedingly few places where the influence of man cannot be traced. Over most of the country, indeed, it is impossible to discover a single acre of land where Nature has been allowed to go on working at her own sweet will without interference or restraint.
But near Stirling, between the Lake of Monteith and the sea, there is a wide, desolate valley which is probably in exactly the same condition as it was when the Roman legions halted to reconnoitre before Agricola passed onwards to Perth and Aberdeen.
Indeed, this great peat-moss has been probably in very much the same condition for some 200,000 years, which is a nice round number to represent the ages that have passed since the Great Ice Age.
Now, as then, it is inexpressibly dreary and desolate; everywhere saturated with water, and only to be traversed in dry seasons and with much agility. Even with the greatest care the pedestrian may sink to the waist in a hole of black, slimy, peaty water. Moss, Heather clumps, Sedges, Rushes, and occasionally Cotton-grass, almost at one dead level, stretch right across from the one side of the huge valley to the other.