174 CASSIA CHAMZECRISTA.— SENSITIVE PEA. 
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question whether Longfellow had this plant in mind when in 
“ Evangeline ” he says: 
‘As, at the tramp of a horse’s hoof on the turf of the prairies, 
Far in advance are closed the leaves of the shrinking Mimosa.” 
It is doubtful whether the real mimosa has the very sensitive 
nature the legend implies, but it certainly could not be true of 
the Cassea Chamecrista, Poets do not always draw their inspi- 
ration directly from nature. Their minds are influenced by 
what they have read, as the minds of many other people are. At 
any rate, in no way is our plant 
“Like the Mimosa shrinking from the blight of some familiar finger,” 
as Whittier puts it; and only that it is as bad to change a name 
in general use as to give a misleading one in the first instance, 
it would hardly be worth while continuing its “sensitive ” appella- 
tion. It has been called “Partridge Pea,” but this name has 
been given to other plants, and is therefore still more misleading. 
The botanical name, Cass7a or Casza, in old works, is a very 
ancient one, and is met with in the writings of Dioscorides and 
Theophrastus; but, judging by the description of Pliny, the cele- 
brated Latin writer, the plant that originally bore the name can 
scarcely be anything like our plant, and is believed by some 
authors to have been something akin to the sandal-woods. The 
name in connection with the present genus appears to have 
originated with Tournefort, as Casse; and with a slight change in 
orthography, was adopted by Linnaeus, as we have it now. The 
specific name Chamecrista was the generic name given to the 
plant by Rivinius, a botanist who flourished about the end of 
the seventeenth century, and before the binomial system was 
established. Thus, we still begin the name with a capital, which 
indicates that it once represented a proper or generic term. 
The genus is an unusually extensive one, embracing, perhaps, 
three hundred species, and having representatives in every 
quarter of the globe but Europe. They are chiefly tropical, 
and it is probable that those which are found in the temperate 
