THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 443 



graph. There is such a similarity between these movements 

 and those of animals that they cease under the influence 

 of me same agents. If a plant be sprinkled with opium 

 it falls into a state of narcotism, and its oscillations are 

 utterly stopped. 



The activity of the Semaphore plant is so energetic that 

 it is not arrested in boughs which have been cut from the 

 parent plant. Broussonnet saw the leaflets of a branch 

 which he had plunged into water move for three days 

 after. 



In the leaves of the Nepenthes, or pitcher-plant, the phe- 

 nomenon is not less apparent. Every night, as we have 

 said, the lids of their pitchers ,close while the water is dis- 

 tilled inside, and in the morning the vase opens spontane- 

 ously, as if to offer itself to the traveller. 



In a host of flowers the stamens and pistils at the time of 

 fecundation are visibly agitated, bending one towards the 

 other in order to accomplish their task. In some, such as 

 the Cacti and the imperial fritillary (Fritillaria imperialis, 

 Linn.), it is the stamens that are affected with this un- 

 wonted mobility ; in others, which is the rarer case, the 

 pistils lean towards the other sex, as is noticed in the flow- 

 ers of the Nigellaa and the Passiflorse. 



There are certain NympheaB which during the day ex- 

 pand their flowers on the tranquil surface of some river, 

 and at night sleep in its depths. 



To these spontaneous acts must be added accidental irri- 

 tations, from the action of which the organs strive so ener- 

 getically to escape. We have seen with what extraordinary 

 rapidity the sensitive plant shrinks from the least injury. 



