174 CASSIA CnAM.*:CRISTA. SENSITIVE PEA. 



question whether Longfellow had this plant in mind when in 

 " Evangeline " he says : 



"As, at the tramp of a horse's hoof on the turf of the prairies, 

 Far ill advance are closed the leaves of the shrinking Mimosa." 



It is doubtful whether the real mimosa has the very sensitive 

 nature the legend implies, but it certainly could not be true of 

 the Cassia Chamcecrista. Poets do not always draw their inspi- 

 ration directly from nature. Their minds are influenced by 

 what they have read, as the minds of many other people are. At 

 any rate, in no way is our plant 



" Like the Mimosa shrinking from the blight of some familiar finger," 



as Whittler puts it ; and only that it is as bad to change a name 

 in general use as to give a misleading one in the first instance, 

 it would hardly be worth while continuing Its " sensitive" appella- 

 tion. It has been called " Partridge Pea," but this name has 

 been given to other plants, and Is therefore still more misleading. 



The botanical name, Cassia or Casia, in old works, is a very 

 ancient one, and Is met with In the writings of DIoscorides and 

 Theophrastus ; but, judging by the description of Pliny, the cele- 

 brated Latin writer, the plant that originally bore the name can 

 scarcely be anything like our plant, and is believed by some 

 authors to have been something akin to the sandal-woods. The 

 name in connection with the present genus appears to have 

 originated with Tournefort, as Casse ; and with a slight change in 

 orthography, was adopted by Linnaeus, as we have it now. The 

 specific name Chamcecrista was the generic name given to the 

 plant by Rivinlus, a botanist who flourished about the end of 

 the seventeenth century, and before the binomial system was 

 established. Thus, we still begin the name with a capital, which 

 indicates that it once represented a proper or generic term. 



The genus is an unusually extensive one, embracing, perhaps, 

 three hundred species, and having representatives in every 

 quarter of the globe but Europe. They are chiefly tropical, 

 and it is probable that those which are found in the temperate 



