306 THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



shows a moderately-sized berrv of the best colour, and possesses a 

 fine piquant flavour. It is an object with those well up in preserving 

 this fine fruit to keep the berries entire, and if they can be had as 

 nearly uniform in size as possible, so much the better. No preserve 

 is more difiicult to make to satisfy the eye and the palate than this ; 

 and the first-class housekeeper prides herself in these two things — 

 preserving them to appear whole, and of a rich, ruby, transparent 

 colour. 



Such are the names of the principal varieties we recommend for 

 general cultivation. With them, properly cultivated, no one, neither 

 cottager nor lord, need care for more, although we would not reject 

 either the Hautbois or the alpines when a little variety in flavour, 

 colour, and size, is desiderated. Faemee. 



THE SEjN'SITIYE PLANT. 



N its native country (Brazil) this singular plant, Acacia 

 mimosa, grows to the height of seven or eight feet, 

 and is armed with short recurved thorns ; the leaves 

 grow upon long footstalks, which are prickly, each sus- 

 taining two pair of wings. Eromthe place where these 

 are inserted come out small branches, having three or four globular 

 heads of pale purplish flowers coming out from ^the side on short 

 peduncles. " Naturalists," says Dr. Darwin, "have not explained the 

 immediate cause of the collapsing of the sensitive plant ; the leaves 

 meet and close in the night, during the sleep of the plant, or when 

 exposed to too much cold in the daytime, in the same manner as 

 when they are a fleeted by external violence, folding their upper sur- 

 faces together, and in part over each other, like scales or tiles, so as 

 to expose as little of the upper surface as may be to the air. Many 

 of the pinnate acacias close also at night, but are not otherwise sen- 

 sitive, and do not indeed collapse quite so far, for when touched in 

 the night, during their sleep, they fall still farther, especially when 

 touched on the footstalks between the stem and the leaflets, which 

 seem to be their most sensitive or irritable part. Now, as their 

 situation after being exposed to external violence resembles their 

 sleep, but with a greater degree of collapse, may it not be owing to a 

 numbness or paralysis consequent on too violent irritation, like the 

 fainting of animals from pain or fatigue ? A sensitive plant being 

 kept in a dark room till some hours after daybreak, its leaves and leaf- 

 stalks were collapsed as in its most profound sleep, and on exposing it 

 to the light, above twenty minutes passed before the ■ plant was 

 thoroughly awake and had expanded itself. During the night the 

 upper surface of the leaves are appressed. This would seem to show 

 that the office of this surface of the leaf was to expose the fluids of 

 the plant to the light as well as to the air. 



I have kept it in the dark and unexpanded during the entire day. 

 Although easy grown, and required to be treated simply as a ten- 



