T94 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES 



curious work is written in the Swedish language ; and from its high 

 value, it may probably never appear in public. 



The vegetable reign remained the favourite branch of the studies of 

 LiNN.^us. Propitious nature unravelled to his penetrating eye many 

 secrets and latent operations of the empire of Flora. His progress in 

 the knowledge of the physiology and the properties of the plants ex- 

 tended farther than that of any of his predecessors. 



The similitude which the plants bore to animals, v/as partly the basis 

 of his system, the truth of which it confirmed in many respeds. In 

 1754 he discovered that the plants are subjeft to a regular sleep, and 

 repose by night like the animals. A plant, (Lotus Ornithopodioides)^ the 

 seed of which had been sent him by professor De Sauvages of Mont- 

 fellier, occasioned this new observation. It bore two flowers. He 

 recommended the gardener to take the utmost care of them. Two days 

 after LiNNiEus returned late in the evening to see how they were 

 thriving. He looked, searched and could discover no flowers. The 

 next night he found them as invisible as before. The follo-wing morn^ 

 ing he eame and the flowers appeared as usual, but the gardener thought 

 they were fresh ones, as he had not been able to find any before, after 

 so many unsuccessful searches. This circumstance engrossed the at- 

 tention of LiNNiEus. He visited again the fugitive flowers on the 

 third evening ; they had again vanished, but he found them at last, 

 deeply wrapt up in and quite covered by some leaves. This only served 

 to excite his curiosity more and more. In order to surprise nature in 

 her wonders he perambulated the garden and the hot-house, in the 

 dead of some night, with a lanthorn in his hand — ^and there saw that 



the 



