Plants are themselves generally unable to move from their fixed positions, so if they are to become prominent in the world they must send out their children—and many and ingenious are their devices for accomplishing this end. Most of my readers are familiar with the parachutes of the silk weed, dandelion and various members of the Compositae family. How they sail through the air. A walk through the autumn forests will make one the unconscious, perhaps unwilling, carrier of numerous Spanish needles, stick tights, burrs and seeds of various plants who have taught their children to steal rides in all sorts of provoking ways. I imagine the wicked old mother laughs as her ugly baby clings to your clothing, sure of a safe ride to a more favorable place for growing. Many plants achieve the same end in a more pleasant way. They produce fruits and berries so luscious that some bird or animal will carry it some distance for the sake of the pulp. Man himself, philanthropist as he is, when he finds that a plant has produced a luscious fruit or palatable seed, will help the distribution and growth, and bring his superior intelligence to the assistance of the plant’s slow instinct to improve its product. A book might be written upon the methods of seed dissemination. In fact, there is a very interesting book upon the subject. We will just notice briefly the marvelous adaptation of plants to their environment. In the dry plains of Arizona grows a peculiar thick-leaved, stunted, cactus-like plant, suited to withstand the drouth. In the forests of Central South America a great vine climbs to the tops of the tallest trees and there flaunts its gay colors to the breeze. In Damara Land, southwest tropical Africa, upon a small upland section, and nowhere else in the world, grows the marvelous Welwitschia mirabilis, with no real leaves, but with its two cotyledons, persistent and growing to enormous length, living a century and acquiring a great trunk, the flower-stalk growing up from the bare trunk while the two great leaves, if I may so designate them, whip about in the breezes for a century without change, except as they fray out at the ends. These three so dissimilar plants all had a common, not so remote, ancestor, but have grown so unlike in their effort to adapt themselves to their environment, that no casual observer would suspect they were akin. There is so much to say about the wonderful intelligence displayed by plants in their various activities, that a volume could not do the subject justice. We started with the question, Do plants have instinct? We end with the question, Have they? Rowland Watts.