The question, whether plants possess sensation, whether they have any disposition of parts at all analogous to the nervous system of animals, has been often put forward, but as yet the answers have been unsatisfactory. The point is one well worthy all the attention of the vegetable physiologist; but regarding plants as the link between the animal and the mineral kingdom,—looking upon phyto-chemistry, as exhibited by them, as the means employed to produce those more complex organizations which exist in animals,—we necessarily consider plants as mere natural machines for effecting organic arrangements, and, as such, that they cannot possess any nervous sensibility. Muscular contraction may be represented in many of their marvellous arrangements; and any disturbance produced by natural or artificial means would consequently effect a change in the operations of those forces which combine to produce vegetable life. Indeed, the experiments of Carlo Matteucci, already referred to, prove that an incision across a leaf, the fracture of a branch, or the mere bruising of any part of the plant, interferes with the exercise of that power which, under the operation of luminous agency, decomposes carbonic acid, and effects the assimilation of the other elements.
To recapitulate. A plant is an organized creation; it is so in virtue of certain strange phyto-chemical operations, which are rendered active by the solar influences involved in the great phenomena of light, and by the excitation of caloric force mid electrical circulation. It is a striking exemplification of the united action of certain empyreal powers, which give rise to the combination, of inorganic principles under such forms that they become capable of obeying the mysterious impulses of life.
The poet has imaged the agency of external powers in various shapes of spiritualized beauty. From the goddess Flora, and her attendant nymphs, to the romantic enchantress who called up flowers by the light touch of her wand, we have, in all these creations, foreshadowings of the discovery of those powers which science has shown are essential to vegetable life. A power from without influences the plant; but the animal is dependent upon a higher agency which is potent within him.
The poet’s dream pleases the imaginative mind; and, associating in our ideas all that is graceful and loveable in the female form, with that diviner feeling which impresses the soul with the sense of some unseen spirituality, we perceive in the goddess, the enchantress, or the sylph, pure idealizations of the physical powers. The spirit floating over these forms of beauty, and adorning them with all the richness of colour—painting the rose, and giving perfume to the violet—is, in the poet’s mind, one which ascends to nearly the highest point of etherealization, and which becomes, indeed, to him a spirit of light; they ride upon the zephyrs, and they float, in all the luxury of an empyreal enjoyment, down to the earth upon a sunbeam. Such is the work of the imagination. What is the result of the search of plodding science after truth? The sunbeam has been torn into rays, and every ray tasked to tell of its ministry.
Nature has answered to some of the interrogations; and, passing over all the earth, echoed from plant to plant, we have one universal cry proclaiming that every function of vegetable life is due to the spirits of the sun.
The mighty Adansonia of Senegal, hoary with the mosses of five thousand years,—the Pohon upas in their deadly valleys,—the climbing lianas of the Guiana forests,—the contorted serpent-cactus on the burning hills,—the oaks, which spread their branches in our tempered climes,—the glorious flowers of the inter-tropical regions, and those which gem our virent plains,—the reindeer lichen of northern lands, and the confervæ of the silent pool,—the greatest and humblest creations of the vegetable world,—all proclaim their direct dependence upon the mysterious forces which are bound together in the silver thread of Light.
These undulations, pulsations too refined for mortal ears, which quicken and guide these wonderful organisms, may be indeed regarded as sphered music for ever repeating the Divine command, “Let there be Light,” by the creation of which, a dark and dreary chaos was moulded into a star of beauty, capable of radiating brightness to other space-wandering worlds.
FOOTNOTES:
[248] Percy Bysshe Shelley.