[page] 2

Climbing Plants.

THE MOVEMENTS AND HABITS OF CLIMBING PLANTS. By Charles Darwin, Second edition; revised. With illustrations. New York: D. Appleton & Co.; San Francisco: Payot, Upham & Co. 1875. 12mo.; pp. 200.

The celebrated advocate of the doctrine of evolution has here given us a little treatise, the title of which does not promise much, but he finds in the subject many singular facts, which he has arranged and stated in an interesting manner, explaining how the climbers adapt themselves to circumstances, and secure from other plants the support which their own growth refuses to supply. Among his conclusions he finds that the tendrils of climbers turn outward to catch any object that may be in the line of their growth; that if a tendril is bent out of its upward and outward line of growth, it returns; that the tendrils have a spontaneous revolving movement, independently of outward stimulus; that tendrils have the power of movement, and bend quickly toward the side that is touch; that after clasping an object they contract spirally; and that the climbing plants are a conspicuous feature in the vegetable kingdom, especially in the tropical forests.