MAY. 71 



called by the natives of India, Burram. chandali. 

 No sooner do its young leaves shoot out of the 

 ground than they begin moving up and down ; 

 now with sudden jerks, now with a gentle wav- 

 ing motion. By day or night, in sun or shower, 

 the plant is never at rest ; and if the beholder 

 grasp it with his hand, and compel it to be still 

 for a moment, it is no sooner released than 

 it recommences its action with more rapidity 

 than before, as if trying to regain the time 

 it had lost while under pressure. The leaves 

 are composed of three leaflets. Sometimes one 

 leaflet will wave up and down while the others 

 are motionless, and sometimes the three leaflets 

 move simultaneously : but it has been observed 

 that the whole plant is seldom agitated at one 

 time. This flower is a universal wonder, no 

 botanist being able to account for its voluntary 

 movement. The well-known irritability of the 

 sensitive plant, the Venus's fly-trap, the sun 

 dew, and others, is caused by the touch, and is 

 considered by botanists as similar to the action 

 of muscular animal fibre, under the influence ot 

 galvanism. But this plant needs no approach 

 of external objects to impel its action, nor is it 

 influenced by electricity in the air, or by any 

 perceptible cause. In our hothouses, the plant 

 loses some of its acting power, and has only a 

 faint tremulous motion. It is also, in India, 

 sometimes nearly quiet during the middle of the 

 day, but its agitation is, in its own climate, ge- 

 nerally as unceasing as that of the heaving 

 ocean, or the beating heart. 



