Do trees and shrubs feel consciously? Have they any perception of changes about them likely to affect themselves? Anybody knows for instance how a dog or a cat will scent the family's approaching departure for the summer, even before the trunks begin to be packed, and show dejection. May _not trees have some similar perception One scientist, an Indian we, think, has detected the flow in their veins and the pulsation of their hearts. Another has analysed the death struggles of a flower and registered the moment of its death. And it is a commonplace hardly to be dispute ed that flowers respond in a marked degree to those who love them. May they not scent danger like other living organisms? The question is prompted by the sight of the three or four old palms yet standing amid the wreckage of the Hk. & S. Bank. Chamerops (we think that is the species) is not a lovely creature at pest. But anything more marked than their present dejection and dishevelment could hardly be. It is as if they knew their destruction were impending and~ dreaded it, while they mourn the destruction of the familiar buildings about them. All this may be sentimental nonsense but one fancies that trees may ju their long life develop all sorts of faculties of which we hardly dream.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.