"Plants offer some facts to our observation which seem to indicate that they possess feeling, but we are not likely to perceive those facts, because of the strong persuasion that they are insensible, which has prevailed among us for so long. We ought to agree to consider the question _tabula rasa_, and to subject plants to a new, impartial, and unprejudiced examination. An inhabitant of the moon, possessed of intellectual faculties like ours, but without any preconceived ideas about the insensibility of plants, would be the philosopher whom we require. Let us imagine such an observer engaged in studying the productions of our earth, and, after having given his attention to the polypes and other insects multiplied by the process of grafting, passing on to the contemplation of vegetables. He would, doubtless, take them at the period of their birth. With this view, he would sow seed of various species, and he would carefully watch their germination. Let us suppose that some of those seeds have been reversed in the sowing, the sprouting part turned downwards, the stem upwards; and the observer has the skill to distinguish one end of the seed from the other, and knows their functions. After some days, he will remark that the seed has grown into this reversed position, that the stem is turned upward, and the sprouting portion downward. He will feel no surprise; he will attribute a circumstance which is so hurtful to the life of the plant, to the mistake he has made in sowing the seed. But, continuing to observe, he will see the sprout and the stem each bending itself in the opposite direction, and trying to attain the right position. This change of direction will strike him as very remarkable, and he will begin to suspect that the organized being which he is studying is endowed with a certain amount of discernment. Too prudent, however, to pronounce upon these early indications, he will suspend his judgment and pursue his investigations. The plants whose germination our physicist has been observing, have been raised in the neighbourhood of a hedge. Thus favoured, and carefully cultivated, they have made great progress in a very short time. The soil which surrounds them at some distance is of two opposite qualities. That on the right of the plants is rich, damp, and spongy; that on the left is dry, hard, and gravelly. Our observer remarks that the roots, after having begun by extending equally on both sides, have changed their direction, and have spread out towards the rich and humid soil; over which they are stretching, and thus threatening to deprive the plants already there of their due share of nourishment. To prevent this inconvenience, he digs a ditch between the plants which he is observing and those they threaten to starve, and now he thinks he has provided against everything. But the plants, which he believes he has governed, disconcert all his precautions by extending their roots downwards, under the ditch, and gaining the other side.