88 GREAT WHITE WATER-LILY. 



This highly interesting phenomenon is beautifully 

 described by the poet : 



" But, conscious of the earliest beam, 



She rises from her humid nest, 

 And sees, reflected from the stream, 

 The virgin whiteness of her breast. 



Till the bright day-star to the west 



Declines, in ocean's surge to lave; 

 Then, folded in her modest vest, 



She slumbers on the rocking wave." 



Like many other curious facts in Natural History, 

 this very poetical peculiarity of the Water-Lily was 

 long supposed, by men of science, to owe its exist- 

 ence entirely to poetic fancy; but Sir James E. Smith 

 (than whom no one is greater in authority on Eng- 

 lish botany) says: " The sinking of the flowers under 

 water at night having been denied, or at least doubt- 

 ed, I have been careful to verify it in this species. 

 The same circumstance is recorded of the Egyptian 

 N. Lotus, from the most remote antiquity. The 

 stimulus of light, which, indeed, acts evidently on 

 many other blossoms and leaves, expands and raises 

 with peculiar force those splendid white flowers, 

 that the pollen may reach the stigma uninjured; 

 and when that stimulus ceases to act, they close 

 again, drooping by their own weight to a certain 

 depth. The still more ponderous fruit sinks to the 

 bottom." Coleridge, perhaps more beautifully than 

 truthfully, remarks: " The Water-Lily, in the midst 



