When the waters of a stream rise, another aquatic plant, the _Kuppia Maritima_ is able to coil and uncoil its flower stalks, which are curled in a spiral fashion; and, as the depth of the water in which it grows changes, its blossoms are always kept on a level with the surface. In plant as in animal life, there is this wonderful power of accommodation to circumstances which might otherwise prove entirely adverse to the continuation of that life. Instinct is the term applied to vegetable as well as animal life. We use it for want of a better, although it certainly does not cover all that is implied in innumerable instances. A thoughtful writer says that instinct, which belongs to the physiological expression of life, has no other end or function than the maintenance of these forms, whence it never operates without manifesting effects in the organic mechanism. Reason, on the other hand, has no relation to the body, except as the soul’s body or instrument; it belongs to the soul purely, and may be exercised without giving the slightest external token. “The life whose phenomena are the instincts impels us only to eat, to drink, to propagate, to preserve our fabric safe and sound; the spiritual life, the phenomena of which are forms of reason, gives power, not to do corporeal things, but to think and to rise emotionally towards the source of life. It is by reason of this supra-instinctive life that man stands as the universal master.” The great naturalist Buffon also says, “Man thinks, hence he is master over creatures which do not think.” And an ancient author writes finely, “While other animals bend their looks downwards to earth, He gave to man a lofty countenance, commanded him to lift his face to heaven, and behold with upturned eyes the stars.” This has been a digression into which the use of the term instinct led me. Instinct leads the carnivorous animal to feed on flesh; but if this is scarce—even if fruit is plentiful, and offers itself in profusion—the puma will devour wild gooseberries and raspberries; so will the coyote wolves in the Rocky Mountains. I stayed for some time in a mountain region in Colorado—the district in which I made my notes for “Candelaria,” a story some of you have perhaps read in the pages of this magazine—and there in the autumn the big bears would come in their heavy rolling gait down the mountain-sides to devour the wild fruits, “choke cherries” and the like. The power of accommodation to the exigencies of circumstance is so great that, as scientists will tell you, species will often develop through these, in time, an extra member. And again, faculties and powers, by their non-use, will desert us in time. Our power of adaptability is in point of fact beyond calculation. “All things are possible to him that believeth” is a truth too little tested by most of us.