366 THE UNIVERSE. 



This regularity in the opening of flowers strikes every 

 person; some savage races make use of it to divide their 

 days and their toils. These begin at the hour when the 

 marigold opens, and the Natchez, Chateaid^riand says, 

 make their love appointments for the time when the last 

 rays of day are aboiit to close the flowers of the Hibiscus.^ 



Other flowers, less regular in their habits, only open 

 under the influence of certain atmosiDheric conditions, from 

 which they have acquired the surname of meteoric. Some 

 of them have gained considerable celebrity. Among these 

 is the rain-marigold, which, so soon as the dark clouds 

 begin to gather, closes its corolla with the greatest care, 

 to preserve it from the storm. The Siberian sow-thistle, 

 of totally different habits, accustomed to hoar-frost, seems 

 to dread our sun; it only expands when the sky is cloudy, 

 and closes its flowerets tightly uj) so soon as the atmosj^here 

 gets warm. 



The connection between man and the vegetable kingdom 

 is not limited to these curious investigations ; plants, living 

 emblems of the rapid passage of hours and time itself, 

 eternal lessons of wisdom, are associated with all our 

 wants, oiu' pleasures, and our pains." 



1 There is something very inexplicable in these facts. The Sidas of India 

 expand their iiowers in the morning onh', while the Abutilons, which scarcehj 

 differ from them in any point of structure, only nufold their blossoms in the 

 evening. — Tr. 



^ "There can be no doubt that in all ages, and under all the varied conditions 

 of his existence upon the earth, man has been dependent, more or less directly, 

 for his support upon the plants growing upon its surface. In the fertile plains 

 of the tropics he is almost as exclusively frngivoroiis as those monkeys from 

 whom he now and then endeavours to trace his origin as a species, drawing his 

 food and materials for the little clothing and slielter he there requires solely 

 from the plants that spring up in wild profusion around him. Even in the more 

 sterile regions of the North, where he is denied a purely vegetable existence, lie is 

 still prone to eke out his subsistence or vary his repast by recourse to the herbs 

 of the field; the fish-eating Kamtchadale seasons his meal with the stewed bulbs 

 of the scarlet lily ; the hunter of the Barren Grounds, when the carriboo and 



