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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
THE INFLUENCE OF HABIT IN PLANT-LIFE.
IN ALL SHADES.
COLONIAL FARM-PUPILS.
A GOLDEN ARGOSY.
INVESTORS AND THE STOCK EXCHANGE.
THE ‘LADY GODIVA.’
OCCASIONAL NOTES.
No. 112.—Vol. III.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1886.
THE INFLUENCE OF HABIT INPLANT-LIFE.
The old maxim regarding the power of habitis usually and rightly regarded as exhibiting athorough application to the regulation of animallife. Not merely in human affairs is habitallowed to be ‘a second nature;’ but in lowerlife as well, the influence of use and wont isplainly perceptible. A dog or cat equally witha human being is under the sway of theaccustomed. That which may be at first unusual,soon becomes the normal way of life. Even, asthe physiologist can prove, in a very large partof ordinary human existence, we are the creaturesof habit quite as much as we are the childrenof impulse. It is easily provable, for example,that such common acts as are involved in reading,writing, and speaking, are merely perpetuatedhabits. At first, these acquirements present difficultiesto the youthful mind. A slow educativeprocess is demanded, and then, by repetitionand training, the lower centres of the brainacquire the power of doing the work of higherparts and centres. We fall into the habit, inother words, of writing and speaking, just asour muscles fall into the way of guiding ourmovements. No doubt, a large part of thedifficulty is smoothed away for us by the factthat we inherit the aptitude for the performanceof these common actions. But they fall, nevertheless,into the category of repeated and inheritedhabits; and equally with the newer or fresh ideasand tasks we set ourselves, the actions of commonlife may be regarded as merely illustrating thecurious and useful effect of repeated and fixedhabit on our organisation.
Recent researches in the field of plant-life,however, it is interesting to note, show that habitdoes not reign paramount in the animal worldalone. The plant-world, it has been wellremarked, too often presents to the ordinaryobserver the aspect of a sphere of dull pulselesslife, wherein activity is unrepresented, andwherein the familiar actions of animal existenceare unknown. Nothing is farther from thetruth than such an idea. The merest tyro inbotany is nowadays led to study actions in plantswhich are often indistinguishable from those ofanimal l