DESCRIPTIVE LIST OP FLOWERS. 287 



they touch those below them, these also will contract 

 and fall, so that by touching one another, they will con- 

 tinue to fall for some time. 



Many years since I was greatly interested in a bed of 

 Sensitive Plants, which filled a frame four feet by ten. I 

 set out the young plants in a hot-bed, where the heat was 

 nearly spent, some time in May, about eight inches apart. 

 The glass was kept on till the middle of June, when the 

 plants were fully exposed. They continued to nourish 

 until the bed was completely filled. It was a source of 

 great amusement to myself and visitors to irritate this 

 mass of plants, which was easily done, by giving the 

 frame a gentle kick. The eflect would be to cause every 

 plant to drop its foot-stalks and close its leaves. If it 

 was very warm, the foot-stalks would gradually rise, and 

 the leaflets resume their expanded state; the plant is 

 most irritable in the greatest heat. Dr. Darwin thus 

 characterizes it : 



" Weak with nice sense the chaste Mimosa stands, 

 From each rude touch withdraws her tender hands j 

 Oft as light clouds o'erpass the summer glade, 

 Alarmed, she trembles at the moving shade, 

 And feels alive through all her tender form, 

 The whispered murmurs of the gathering storm ; 

 Shuts her sweet eye-lids to approaching night 

 And hails with freshened charms the rising light." 



In cloudy damp weather, or on the approach of storms, 

 or in the damp of the evening and through the night, the 

 foot-stalks fall, the leaflets close, and the plant appears to 

 be in a state of repose. It is an annual, which, if started 

 in a hot-bed, will flourish in the borders during the sum- 

 mer, but looses its sensitiveness in a great measure as cold 

 weather spproaches. 



