Pythagoras had but known of it, would
have rendered all arguments about the transmigration of souls
superfluous." But, apart from the vein of jocularity running through
these remarks, such striking vegetable phenomena are scientifically as
great a puzzle to the botanist as their movements are to the savage, the
latter regarding them as the outward visible expression of a real inward
personal existence.

But, to quote another kind of sympathy between human beings and certain
plants, the Cingalese have a notion that the cocoa-nut plant withers
away when beyond the reach of a human voice, and that the vervain and
borage will only thrive near man's dwellings. Once more, the South Sea
Islanders affirm that the scent is the spirit of a flower, and that the
dead may be sustained by their fragrance, they cover their newly-made
graves with many a sweet smelling blossom.

Footnotes:

1. See Tylor's "Primitive Culture," 1873, i. 474-5; also Dorman's
"Primitive Superstitions," 1881, p. 294.

2. "Primitive Culture," i. 476-7.

3. Jones's "Ojibways," p. 104.

4. Marsden's "History of Sumatra," p. 301.

5. Mariner's "Tonga Islands," ii. 137.

6. St. John, "Far East," i. 187.

7. See Tylor's "Primitive Culture," i. 475.

8. Dorman's "Primitive Superstitions," p. 294; also Schoolcraft's
"Indian Tribes."

9. See Thorpe's "Northern Mythology," iii. 61.

10. "Origin of Civilisation," 1870, p. 192. See Leslie Forbes' "Early
Races of Scotland," i. 171.

11. Folkard's "Plant-lore, Legends, and Lyrics," p. 463.

12. Conway's "Mystic Trees and Flowers," _Blackwood's Magazine_, 1870,
p. 594.

13. Thorpe's "Northern Mythology," i. 212.

14. See Black's "Folk-Medicine."

15. "Mystic Trees and Flowers," p. 594.

16. "Primitive Culture," ii. 215.

17. Metam., viii. 742-839; also Grimm's Teut. Myth., 1883, ii. 953-4

18. Grimm's Teut. Myth., ii. 653.

19. Quoted in Tylor's "Primitive Culture," ii. 221.

20. Thorpe's "Northern Mythology," ii. 72, 73.

21. Ibid., p. 219.

22. "Superstitions of Modern Greece," by M. Le Baron d'Estournelles, in
_Nineteenth, Century_, April 1882, pp. 394, 395.

23. See Dorman's "Primitive Superstitions," p. 288.

24. "The Tempest," act i. sc. 2.

25. Dorman's "Primitive Superstitions," p. 288.

26. _Ibid.,_ p. 295.

27. See chapter on Demonology.

28. See Keary's "Outlines of Primitive Belief," 1882, pp. 66-7.

29. Metam., viii. 714:--

"Frondere Philemon