DO FLOWERS FEEL?

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 142, 16 June 1923, Page 14

DO FLOWERS FEEL?

A SCIENTIST'S EXPERIMENTS.

Flowers are animals! ' They can feel, think, suffer, love, and procreate (writes Basil Woon in the " New York American "). These are the remarkable conolusions arrived at by Professor Viala, and the sum of his observations, has been confirmed by no less an august body than the - French Academy of Sciences. A Toulouse savant, who shrouds himself in anonymity because he wishes to pursue his studies undisturbed, found by actual experiment that the sap from a grape-vine was subject to the identical chemical reactions of the blood of a rabbit. Ho went further. He took a dog and a sunflower, and injected into both the microbe of diphtheria. The dog and the flower both became very ill. The flower shed its blossoms and turned a jaundiced yellow ; the dog lay down, refused all food, and seemed on the point of death. This was not the really remarkable thing. The savant, having established that flowers are subject to the same diseasos as humans, determined to find out whether they could be cured in ■the same way that humans could be cured. So he injected into the veins of the dog and into the stem of the flower the serum which is now' used universally to cure children of diphtheria. After the third' injection of the serum the flower regained its colour, straightened up, and began to take an interest in life. The 1 dog needed-two more injections before liis cure was assured. "In cutting a rose are we inflicting mortal pain? Is there :i Heaven for plants, and v hull? They arc quci-Uous which are certainly pos.ei'g to-day,".