The Bamboo Tree is sometimes the possessor of a whole corps of intelligent and efficient drummers. They attach themselves to the under side of the leaves, from which vantage-point they strike them with their heads whenever their services are required. An Ant of the Sumatran species keeps wonderful time. Though spread out over a number of square yards of leaf space, a group of these tiny creatures will start and stop tapping at the same instant.
Perhaps in some far-distant age, mankind will begin remotely to understand the significance of the music of the plant world and its allies. We have no right to say that the plants are not true musicians. While we may only understand their system of harmony in part, we can realize it contains hidden beauties just as the presence of microscopic organisms in the world is indicated by their effects rather than by actual perception.
CHAPTER IX
Science in the Plant World
“Weak with nice sense, the chaste Mimosa stands,
From each rude touch withdraws her timid hands.”
Plants are profound scientists. Their knowledge may not be as broad and far-reaching as that of man, but they are more successful workers than he. With all his wonderful discoveries in physics and chemistry, man as a class has not yet learned to conduct his own body so as to make it yield the highest efficiency. In fact, members of the human race are today wearing out their frames at a faster rate than ever before. Adept at running huge mechanisms of steel, they are neglectful of those most delicate and wonderful machines which are bound up with their own life processes.
Plants are not so prodigal. Whenever they are given a chance, they develop and expand their powers in the most marvelous way. They bring out the latent strength in their beings and so conduct themselves as to conserve their energies. Whether by instinct, reason or blind force they always know just what to do and how to make the most of their heredity and environment. Their efficiency rating is one hundred per cent.
As the whole life of all plants is a scientific progression, we can only consider in the brief limits of this chapter some of the more startling instances of the marvelous sense they exhibit in dealing with Nature’s forces.
Probably one of the reasons we do not always think of plants in the human, sympathetic way we should, is that we are inclined to regard them as quiet, static objects, playthings of every wind that blows upon them. Such is far from the case. Life is motion and the plants are very much alive and very much in motion. From the tiniest cell to the largest tree they exhibit constant, pulsating movements. Many of the movements are described through so small a space as ordinarily to escape our notice, but a little observation makes them quite apparent. They all have a well-directed, scientific purpose.
What is plant growth itself but motion upward and outward? If a telescope or an instrument such as Sir Jaghadish Bose’s crescograph be trained on a healthy plant, it is possible to see the growth actually take place before the eye somewhat as it is managed in motion pictures. Travelers aver that if a Banana Plant be cut off close to the ground and the surrounding soil well supplied with water, the sturdy creature will make such strenuous efforts to destroy the effects of its mutilation that its growth may easily be perceived with the unaided eye, and a full-sized leaf produced in a single day.
Leaves and flowers are usually quite mobile. When they go to sleep, they droop and fold their edges together very carefully, sometimes to such an extent as to make themselves almost invisible. Even such an astute man as Linnaeus was once completely deceived by some sleeping specimens of Lotus. They were very fine red flowers and he was proud of them. Taking a friend to view them one evening by lantern-light, what was his dismay to find that they had completely disappeared. He concluded that they had been stolen or eaten by insects and went away, only to find them in full array on his return the next morning. It took several nocturnal visits to unravel the mystery and discover that the flowers folded themselves and retired so adroitly into the surrounding foliage each evening that they were completely hidden.