THE ROYAL FAMILIES OF PLANTS. 481 
keep careful watch of storm and sunshine, however, as 
well as of day and night, and close their leaves promptly 
' when unfavorable conditions arise. This is but a small 
matter; other plants do the same; but no other tribe 
shows such tenderness of feeling in the foliage. Nor do 
they stop here. In the East Indies grows the strange 
plant, Desmodium gyrans. It may be compared, perhaps, 
in appearance, to our Wild Indigo, but its leaves are 
more like those of the Rose. The leaflet at the end only 
folds up at night and opens by day ; but the side-leaflets 
are always moving, the two sides alternately up and 
down with a jerking motion, as one says, like the second- 
hand of a watch. The touch arrests it, or so does cold 
or narcotics. But left to itself it soon begins again. 
Now this, seeing there are here no bones, joints, mus- 
cles, or other machinery to execute such movements, is a 
‘Most astonishing thing. Nearest of anything the world 
affords does it come to showing the Abstract Life work- 
_ ing independently, without mediate agency, and challeng- 
ing all our skill to grasp it, or account, in any satisfactory 
way, for the presence that we so unequivocally recognize. 
Electrical and chemical action are called to explain it, but 
they fail. We leave it, as one of Nature’s mysteries. 
This hasty glance gives but a superficial notion of the 
real grandeur of this most kingly of these Royal Orders. 
From these considerations, however, we may probably 
gain sufficient evidence to prove the great importance of 
these plants in the economy of nature, as related both 
to man, to the animal kingdom in general, to the great 
Principles of vitality and development, higher and broader 
than all. A further illustration of these ideas may be 
had from the study of the other of these families, which 
will engage our future attention. 
AMERICAN NAT., VOL. I. 6l 
