The leaves of the Venus’ Fly-trap fold upon each other and enclose the insect which is attracted by the sweet juice on the leaf, three extremely sensitive bristles or hairs giving the plant notice that the insect is touching them.  A recent writer gives the following description of a peculiar plant.  He says:  “On the shores of Lake Nicaragua is to be found an uncanny product of the vegetable kingdom known among the natives by the expressive name of ‘the Devil’s Noose.’  Dunstan, the naturalist, discovered it long ago while wandering on the shores of the lake.  Attracted by the cries of pain and terror from his dog, he found the animal held by black sticky bands which had chafed the skin to bleeding point.  These bands were branches of a newly-discovered carnivorous plant which had been aptly named the ’land octopus.’  The branches are flexible, black, polished and without leaves, and secrete a viscid fluid.”

You have seen flowers that closed when you touched them.  You remember the Golden Poppy that closes when the sun goes down.  Another plant, a variety of orchid, has a long, slender, flat stem, or tube, about one-eighth of an inch thick, with an opening at the extreme end, and a series of fine tubes where it joins the plant.  Ordinarily this tube remains coiled up into a spiral, but when the plant needs water (it usually grows upon the trunks of trees overhanging swampy places) it slowly uncoils the little tube and bends it over until it dips into the water, when it proceeds to suck up the water until it is filled, when it slowly coils around and discharges the water directly upon the plant, or its roots.  Then it repeats the process until the plant is satisfied.  When the water is absent from under the plant the tube moves this way and that way until it finds what it wants—­just like the trunk of an elephant.  If one touches the tube or trunk of the plant while it is extended for water, it shows a great sensitiveness and rapidly coils itself up.  Now what causes this life action?  The plant has no brains, and cannot have reasoned out this process, nor even have acted upon them by reasoning processes.  It has nothing to think with to such a high degree.  It is the Will behind the curtain, moving this way and that way, and doing things.

There was once a French scientist named Duhamel.  He planted some beans in a cylinder—­something like a long tomato can lying on its side.  He waited until the beans began to sprout, and send forth roots downward, and shoots upward, according to nature’s invariable rule.  Then he moved the cylinder a little—­rolled it over an inch or two.  The next day he rolled it over a little more.  And so on each day, rolling it over a little each time.  Well, after a time Duhamel shook the dirt and growing beans out of the cylinder, and what did he find?  This, that the beans in their endeavor to grow their roots downward had kept on bending each day downward; and in their endeavor to send shoots upward, had kept on bending upward a little each day, until at last there had been formed two complete spirals—­the one spiral being the roots ever turning downward, and the other the shoots ever bending upward.  How did the plant know direction?  What was the moving power.  The Creative Will behind the curtain again, you see!