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MOVEMENTS OF PLANTS.‡

MR. DARWIN in this work investigates and discusses, after his usual thoroughgoing fashion, a series of phenomena of movement displayed

‡ The Power of Movement in Plants. -By Charles Darwin, LL.D.,F.R.S. Assisted by Francis Darwin. 8vo. London: John Murray, 1880.

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by plants, to which he gives the general name of 'circumnutation.' This term is employed to express the tendency of the different parts of plants in growth, to describe a series of irregular curves, loops, and zig-zags, by their movements successively towards all points of the compass. As we propose in the next number to have an article explanatory of Mr. Darwin's views, we shall not attempt to discuss them in the space at our disposal here.

The experiments recorded are of the most ingenious kind, and carried out with the utmost care, and with that attention to all minutæ which Mr. Darwin so well knows how to bestow upon the most complicated investigations. Hundreds of figures, showing the tracks made by growing plumules and radicles, are reproduced in woodcuts, and we think that on inspecting them the reader will be rather surprised to find that Mr. Darwin has been able to evolve anything definite from such an apparent chaos.