Picture - Cosmic Polymath

LINES OF COMMUNICATION AND FORCE 127
Nature can clearly achieve the same results by various means.
It is extremely difficult and exceedingly dangerous to attempt to define the properties and powers of living
matter. "We certainly cannot dogmatically affirm that all living things devoid of a visible nervous system and
muscles are incapable of feeling and moving. The fact that living things devoid of muscles do move, and to
definite ends, should go far to prove that a nervous system in a visible form is not necessary to sensation and
voluntary motion.
The operations of nature are mysterious and often inscrutable. That she can produce similar results by what
Flu. 26.
Fm. %5.-~Acacia farnesiana. A. Leaf during day. B. The same at night (after Darwin).
FiQ. 28.
Fig. 26.—Branch and leaves of sensitive plant (Mimosa pudica), showing the petiole in its erect state (a) and in its depressed state
(d) ; also the leaflets closed (c) and the leaflets expanded (I). During darkness the leaf stalks hang down, and the leaflets are closed,
while the reverse is the case during light (after Balfour).
Fig. 27.—Leaves of Dionsea muscipula, called Venus's fly-trap, showing the expanded blade of the leaf (a) with three irritable
hairs on each division of the lamina. These hairs, when touched, cause the closure (b, c) of the two halves of the lamina or blade of the
leaf (after Balfour).
Fig. 28.—Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) ; grows on poor bog land and lives largely on insects caught by its leaves. The leaves are
round-shaped, and covered with 200 or more highly sensitive hairs or tentacles. Each liair secretes a pvire viscid fluid, which clogs the
feet and wings of the insects when they alight on it, the hairs bending down upon their victims and fixing them at or near the centre
of the leaf, where they are digested (Century Dictionary).
appear to us dissimilar methods and means is abundantly proved by this. Electricity can be manufactured by
various Hving animals from organised materials, and it can be produced by water or other power from inorganic
materials by means of friction, &c. It is also produced, under certain conditions of the atmosphere, as a natural
force. However produced, electricity is one and the same, The electrical cycle, if I may so designate it, brings us