The united squadrons then started on their homeward voyage, Jack thrusting his nose into every bush, and carefully scanning all the stray objects that seemed to be out of their normal position.

“If these plants and bushes had tongues,” said Jack, “they could probably give us the information we require.”

“Do you think,” inquired Ernest, “that plants and bushes are utterly without sensation?”

“Faith, I can’t say,” replied Jack; “perhaps they can speak if they liked—­probably they have an idiom of their own.  You, that know all languages, and a great many more besides, possibly can converse with them.”

“I should like to know,” said Becker, “why you two gentlemen are always snarling at each other; it is neither amusing nor amiable.”

“Ernest is continually showing me up, father, and it is but fair that I should be allowed to retort now and then.  But to return to plants, Ernest; you say they have nerves?”

“If they have,” said Willis, “they do not seem to possess the bottle of salts that most nervous ladies usually have.”

“No,” replied Ernest, “they have no nerves, properly so called; but there are plants, and I may add many plants, which, by their qualities—­I may almost say by their intelligence—­seem to be placed much higher in the scale of creation than they really are.  The sensitive plant, for example, shrinks when it is touched; tulips open their petals when the weather is fine, and shut them again at sunset or when it rains; wild barley, when placed on a table, often moves by itself, especially when it has been first warmed by the hand; the heliotrope always turns the face of its flowers to the sun.”

“A still more singular instance of this kind was recently discovered in Carolina,” remarked Becker; “it is called the fly-trap.  Its round leaves secrete a sugary fluid, and are covered with a number of ridges which are extremely irritable:  whenever a fly touches the surface the leaf immediately folds inwards, contracts, and continues this process till its victim is either pierced with its spines or stifled by the pressure.”

“It is probably a Corsican plant,” observed Jack, “whose ancestors have had a misunderstanding with the brotherhood of flies, and have left the Vendetta as a legacy to their descendants.”

“There is nothing in Nature,” continued Ernest, “so obstinate as a plant.  Let us take one, for example, at its birth, that is, to-day, at the age when animals modify or acquire their instincts, and you will find that your own will must yield to that of the plant.”

“If you mean to say that the plant will refuse to play on the flute or learn to dance, were I to wish it to do so, I am entirely of your opinion.”

“No, but suppose you were to plant it upside down, with the plantule above and the radicle below; do you think it would grow that way?”

“Plantule and radicle are ambitious words, my dear brother; recollect that you are speaking to simple mortals.”