"And then what will happen?" asked Villebois.
"Wait a moment and you will see."
After a lapse of about fifteen minutes the lobes began slowly to open again, and there before the eyes of the deeply interested watchers lay the spider, sucked half dry and shrivelled up at the bottom of the cavity.
"What I cannot understand, and what I have been trying to discover," said Delapine, "is what makes the leaves close instantly when the hairs are touched, and what it is that causes the gastric juices to pour out precisely as it does in the stomach when one has taken a meal. In our own case the reason is clear enough because the stomach is supplied with nerves and nerve-ends. But botanists assure us that plants have no traces of nerves. And again, why should the leaves reopen the very moment that the plant has had a sufficient meal? Now here is another plant which, like a chameleon, devotes all its energies to catching flies," continued Delapine as he led them over, and pointed to a fine specimen of Drosera.
"You surely recognise the familiar sun-dew with its round head stuck all over with little stalk-like tentacles each having a knob at the end, the whole reminding one of a round pincushion stuffed with pins. Now I have noticed that the heads of these tentacles secrete a sticky, treacly juice, and the moment a fly alights to suck that juice its legs become entangled, and the fly is at once a prisoner. Immediately this happens, all the neighbouring tentacles bend over the captive fly, exactly as the tentacles of a sea-anemone bend over their prey, and suck its life-blood."
"I have not studied these plant problems," said Riche, "but now that you demonstrate some of them so clearly they do indeed appear marvellous."
"Ah, my dear doctor," said Delapine, "there are quite a host of problems awaiting solution in the actions of that plant. The moment one begins to think, and to ask one-self Why and How, one becomes aware of one's dense ignorance of the every-day operations of Nature. We are accustomed to look upon a plant as if it were an inanimate thing, and yet there can be no doubt that it enjoys life, and feels and thinks after some sort of fashion. I have often wondered if it ever occurs to a girl as she plucks a flower that the plant might decidedly object to having its head cut off. Of course I do not lay it down that a plant can feel pain in the same way that we do. That it can feel, I have amply shown you, and that it has some dim consciousness of existence I am fully convinced."
"It is intensely interesting, and must be a splendid relaxation for you, Delapine," said Villebois, "but all the same you should not forget that there are other relaxations also, and one of them is to come over to the summer-house where I see François has just brought some coffee and liqueurs."