~ 
no other difference; and that now pointed out may pos- 
sibly be either inconstant, which we suspect, or the effect 
of cultivation, which is not improbable. 
A most interesting and beautiful Greenhouse annual, 
like the rest of its genus, possessing the curious property of 
having the column, or the support of anthers and stigma, 
endowed with an irritability of so active a kind, that we 
scarcely know of any parallel in other plants. The slightest 
touch of a pin on the outside of it, when curved, is suf- 
ficient to make it leap to the opposite side of the flower, 
and invert the whole of its highly curious apparatus of 
propagation. It is said that the motion is designed for the 
protection of those parts from insects; an explanation 
which, like many others applied to the peculiarities of the 
Vegetable Kingdom, is perhaps more fanciful than true, 
and which only serves to shew how little we are able to 
comprehend of the mysteries of the vegetable world. 
Our drawing was made in August. 
JL. 
