July] FLOWER GARDEN. 449 



the leaf was to expose the fluids of the plant to the light as well as 

 to the air." 



The sensibility of this plant is worthy of admiration, that, not 

 only in the evening or towards night, but at all hours of the day, 

 with the least touch or concussion of air, the leaves are just like a 

 tree dying, droop and complicate themselves immediately, and 

 presently after recover, resuming their former position; so that a 

 person would be induced to think they were really endowed with 

 the sense of feeling. 



The cause of this seemed so hard to be discovered, that a curious 

 Malabarian philosopher, upon his observing the nature of this plant, 

 without being able to discover the cause of its sensibility, ran mad, 

 just as Jlristotle is said to have flung himself headlong into the 

 sea, because he could not comprehend the reason of its ebbing and 

 flowing. 



These plants are more or less susceptible of the touch, according 

 to the warmth of the air in which they grow, being always more 

 irritable in proportion to the heat thereof. 



The light is not the only cause of their expansion, nor the dark- 

 ness of their contraction, for they are often closed in the afternoon 

 two or three hours before the sun descends the horizon; and if the 

 frames in which they are kept be, in the forepart of the day, covered 

 for hours, so as to rentier the place completely dark, yet the leaves 

 will continue their expansion. 



Those plants which are placed in the greatest warmth in winter, 

 continue vigorous and retain their faculty of contracting on being 

 touched; but those that are in a moderate warmth have little or no 

 motion. 



There are eighty-four species of mimosa described; two, with 

 simple leaves; six, with leaves simply pinnate; three, with bigemi- 

 nate or tergeininate leaves; nine, with leaves conjugate, and at the 

 same time pinnate; and sixty-four with doubly-pinnate leaves; 

 several of the species are more or less sensitive, but the far greater 

 number not at all. 



Venus' s Fly -Trap. 



The JHonxa muscipula, or Venus's fly-trap, is one of the most 

 extraordinary productions of nature, in this plant there is an 

 astonishing contrivance to prevent the depredations of insects: the 

 leaves are numerous, generally bending downwards, or rather 

 spreading upon the surface of the earth, and placed in a circular 

 order; each leaf is divided, as it were, into two joints, the lower 

 flat, longish, two edged, and inclining to heart-shaped; some con- 

 sider this lower joint a winged petiole, similar to that on an orange 

 leal. The upper joint consists of two lobes, each semi-oval, the 

 margins furnished with st'in" hairs like the eye lashes, locking into 

 each other when the lobes close, like the teeth of a rat-trap, to 

 which the lobes, marginal hairs, and the manner of their closing, 

 bear a particular resemblance. The interior of the lobes is very 

 irritable, but more particularly so in warm weather, when, if an 

 3 I 



