By Thomas Bruges Flower, Esq. 



101 



selves together, covering the seed vessel. At sunrise they expand, 

 and rise above the water . . . . It is reported that in the 

 Euphrates, the flowers keep sinking in the water till midnight, 

 when they are so deep as to be out of reach of the hand, but to- 

 wards morning they return, and still more as the day advances ; 

 at sunrise they are already above the surface, and expanded; after- 

 wards they rise high above the water." Pliny repeats the same ac- 

 count, and Prosper Alpinus has the following passage: "The celebra- 

 ted stories of the Lotus turning to the Sun, closing its flowers, and 

 sinking under water at night, and rising again in the morning, are 

 conformable to what everybody has observed in the ' Nymphcea* " 

 Sir James Smith, from whom the above quotations are taken, con- 

 firms from his own experience the report of Linnaeus, who (Flora 

 Suecica) describes " Nymphcea alba," as "closing its flowers in the 

 afternoon, and laying them down on the surface of the water till 

 morning, when it rises and expands them, often in a bright day to 

 several inches above the water." Sir James Smith observes, that 

 the veracity of Theophrastus has been impeached, and defends the 

 truth of his narrative, not only on account of his character as "the 

 most faithful and philosophical botanist of antiquity," but also 

 from the actual occurrence of the same phenomenon (though indeed 

 in a minor degree) in " Nymplma alba," believing that it is suffici- 

 ent to render Theophrastus's account exceedingly probable, when 

 we recollect that the circumstances, related in the letter, are de- 

 scribed as taking place in a country where the sun has so much 

 more power; to which he might also have added, and where there 

 exists so much greater an intensity of the solar light. The causes 

 of the motions as affecting the flowers of the Nymphaiacece, as far 

 at least as can be ascertained by observing the circumstances 

 under which these motions take place, will be found exceedingly 

 interesting, when viewed in all their bearings. They are indeed 

 of a more complex nature than appears on a merely superficial ex- 

 amination. It is usual to consider the increased temperature con- 

 sequent on the return of day, to be the chief agent in effecting the 

 periodic motion. Some of the more recent German physiologists are 

 disposed to think otherwise, and to attribute the first step in the 



