Purposiveness runs like a streak through every activity. It permeates the whole forest life. It is observable in plants no less than in animals. Naturalists, indeed, regard trees and plants as truly sentient beings. And the means plants employ to compass the end they have in view, are truly wonderful. Still more remarkable is the fact that hardly two attain their object by exactly the same means. The tropical forest is full of climbing plants bent upon reaching the sunlight. But some climb by coiling round the trunk of a tree like a snake, some swarm up it by holding on with claws, some ascend by means of adhering aerial roots, and some reach what they want by pushing through a tangle of branches spreading out arms and hauling themselves up. And when plants have attained maturity and flowered, the flowers employ numberless ways of attracting insects for the purpose of fertilisation. In a still, tropical forest, such as that of Lower Sikkim, there is no hope of the pollen being carried from one flower to another by air-currents. The flowers have therefore to devise a means for the transport of the pollen. Efforts are made to induce winged creatures--insects in most cases, but sometimes birds--to render assistance. Colours for day-flying insects and scent for night-flying insects are accordingly employed as means to this end. Brilliant colours attract butterflies and bees by day. Strong scent --sometimes pleasant to our taste, sometimes the reverse--attracts moths and other insects by night. And the flowers which depend on their scents and not on colour are usually white or dull brown or green. And this scent is not exhaled when it is not needed, but only when the insects which the flowers wish to attract are about. Orchids especially seem to _know_ what they want. Their aerial roots wander about in search of what they want and seem to smell their way. They use discrimination in utilising their knowledge. They _choose._ And each individual seems to choose in its own way. From among many means of achieving the same end they make a definite choice, and different plants make different choices--they use different means. Plants, therefore, quite evidently employ means to an end. They have an end in view--sometimes their own maintenance, sometimes the perpetuation of their kind, sometimes something else--and they employ means to achieve that end. They are, that is to say, _purposive_ in their nature. * * *