25 AUGUST 1928, Page 12

* * * * PLANT COMPASSES.

Some botanist who has studied what is now called tropism will perhaps explain a habit common to two plants that I have observed lately. In one garden about 90 per cent. of the fox- gloves—which were growing in all sorts of positions—turned to the north, mostly to the north-east ; and all the Ampelopsis Veitchii on the walls of a number of houses in the neigh- bourhood has a strong northerly bent ; and it is only, on the northerly walls that it grows quite vertically.

W, BEACH THOMAS.