NEWS OF SPRING 



are all acquainted. There are other herbs endowed with 

 spontaneous movements that are not so well-known, notably 

 the Hedysarece, among which the Hedysarum gyrans, or Mov- 

 ing-plant, behaves in the most restless and surprising fashion. 

 This little Leguminosa, which is a native of Bengal, but often 

 cultivated in our hothouses, performs a sort of perpetual and 

 intricate dance in honour of the light. Its leaves are divided 

 into three folioles, one wide and terminal, the two others nar- 

 row and planted at the base of the first. Each of these leaflets 

 is animated with a different movement of its own. They live 

 in a state of rhythmical, almost chronometrical and continuous 

 agitation. They are so sensitive to light that their dance flags 

 or quickens according as the clouds veil or uncover that cor- 

 ner of the sky which they contemplate. They are, as we see, 

 real photometers; and this long before Crook^s discovery of 

 the natural ctheoscopes. 



7 



But these plants, to which should be added the Droseras, 



the Dionaeas and many others, are nervous plants that already 



go a little beyond the mysterious and probably imaginary ridge 



that separates the vegetable from the animal kingdom. It is 



[ 34] 



