428 THE UNIVERSE. 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE SLEEP OF PLANTS. 



THE deeper we search into the mysteries of vegetable 

 life the closer relation do we find with animal existence. 

 Exhausted by the functional labor of the day, many plants, 

 when the evening arrives, assume a particular attitude, 

 which they preserve through the night ; this is their sleep. 



This curious phenomenon, which a fortunate accident re- 

 vealed to Linnaeus, was carried by him to demonstration. 

 He first observed it in a Bird's-Foot Lotus growing in one 

 of the greenhouses of the garden at Upsala. Having no- 

 ticed it flowering in the morning, what was his astonish- 

 ment, as he passed by the plant in the middle of the night, 

 to find that he could not see its flowers ! At first the bot- 

 anist thought that some unprincipled amateur had robbed 

 him of them ; but on looking more attentively at the plant, 

 he found that it was against itself the charge of larceny 

 would have to be preferred. In fact, the naturalist ob- 

 served that each evening the leaves of this Lotus assumed 

 a particular position, which hid the corollas : l it was their 

 way of sleeping. 



Thinking that such a phenomenon would not be an iso- 

 lated one, Linnaeus after this passed the nights in wander- 

 ing about in his garden, with a torch in his hand, to verify 



1 The sleep of plants was first observed in India, on the tamarind-tree, by 

 Garcias de Horto in 1567; after this, in 1581, by Val Cordus on the licorice; but 

 it was Linnaeus who first really demonstrated the nature of it. 



