276 FREAKS OF PLANT LIFE. 



fatua), which, in times gone by, has been taken ad- 

 vantage of by designing men to impose on the credu- 

 lous and superstitious. These awns are twisted in 

 their lower portion, and so susceptible of moisture, 

 even that of the human breath, or a damp hand, that 

 they at once exhibit spontaneous movement, twisting 

 and writhing as if endued with animal life. " Jug- 

 glers in the good old time 

 predicted events, and told 

 fortunes, from its motions ; 

 and, to cover the cheat, 

 they called the .awn ' the 

 leg of an Arabian spider,' 

 or 'the leg of an enchanted 

 fly.' " The true rendering 

 of the phenomena, when 

 it came to be understood, 

 supplanted the jugglers. 

 Hooke, one of the early 

 writers on microscopical 

 Fig. 49.— Wild oat (Avena objects, saw beneath the 

 mystery, for he writes : — 

 " Its sensibility to changes in the atmosphere 

 seems to depend on the different texture of its 

 parts, for the awn is composed of two kinds of sub- 

 stances, one that is very porous, loose, and spongy, 

 into which the watery streams of the air may be very 

 easily forced, which will be thereby swelled and ex- 



