DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF FLOWERS. 287 
they touch those befow them, these also will contract 
and fall, so that by touching one another, they will con- 
tinue to fall for some time. 
Many years since I was greatly interested in a bed of 
Sensitive Plants, which filled a frame four feet by ten. I 
set out the young plants in a hot-bed, where the heat was 
nearly spent, some time in May, about eight inches apart. 
The glass was kept on till the middle of June, when the 
plants were fully exposed. They continued to flourish 
until the bed was completely filled. It was a source of 
great amusement to myself and visitors to irritate this 
mass of plants, which was easily done, by giving the 
frame a gentle kick. The effect would be to cause every 
plant to drop its foot-stalks and close its leaves. If it 
was very warm, the foot-stalks would gradually rise, and 
the leaflets resume their expanded state; the plant is 
most irritable in the greatest heat. Dr. Darwin thus 
characterizes it: — 
‘Weak with nice sense the chaste Mimosa stands, 
From each rude touch withdraws her tender hands; 
Oft as light clouds o’erpass the summer glade, 
Alarmed, she trembles at the moving shade, 
And feels alive through all her tender form, 3 
The whispered raurmurs of the gatherifig storm ; 
Shuts her sweet eye-lids to approaching night 
And hails with freshened charms the rising light.” 
In cloudy damp weather, or on the approach of storms, 
or in the damp of the evening and through the night, the 
foot-stalks fall, the leaflets close, and the plant appears to 
be in a state of repose. It is an annual, which, if started 
in a hot-bed, will flourish in the borders during the sum- 
mer, but looses its sensitiveness in a great measure as cold 
weather spproaches. 
