30 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
We can testify to similar results, from conveying a specimen by 
railway. The circumstance that most of the sensitive plants are 
more active in their native country than with us has been 
already alluded to, and we may add, as a fact of equal signifi- 
cance, that towards the close of the year when the Mimosa 
pudica (an annual) loses its leaves and ultimately dies, the 
sensibility to external impressions is much more feeble than 
when the plant is in full vigour. 
Opium, ether, chloroform, all exert a paralysing influence on 
the leaves. Strong acids and other caustic substances, on the 
other hand, induce contraction at once. With reference to the 
action of ether, we may relate the result of some trials that we 
have recently made with that fluid. On allowing a drop to fall 
on one of the leaflets of Mimosa pudica from a height of five 
or six inches, contraction of the leaflet instantly took place, and 
was immediately followed by the motion in successive order of 
the adjacent folioles proceeding from the apex towards the stalk 
of the leaf. When, on the other hand, the drop of etherwas placed 
as gently as possible on the surface, the leaflet did not move, but 
seemed paralysed by the ansesthetic agent, while the adjacent 
ones not touched by the ether moved as in the preceding case. 
Ether-spray applied with the jet had precisely similar effect. 
When the spray fell directly on the leaflets, that is with some 
force, the impact of the falling drops counteracted any paralysing 
power that the ether might have ; but when the spray was so 
directed as not to fall directly or with force on the leaflets, then 
such of them as came within its influence were rendered motion- 
less, the adjacent folioles contracting from the distal towards the 
proximal end of the leaf as before. A spray of water directed 
on to the leaflets caused them to fall, but if not allowed to im- 
pinge directly on them no motion ensued, though of course the 
water did not, as the ether did, stop their mobility, as a touch 
was sufficient to make them collapse after the water-spray, while 
after the ether-spray contact produced no effect. 
The effect of the ether-spray on certain other plants was, in two 
instances, so remarkable that a record may here be given, though 
it must also be borne in mind that the results now to be men- 
tioned were only obtained in two instances out of many trials 
on various plants in hot-houses, in the end of November of the 
past year (1867). On applying the spray to the extremity of one 
leaf of Iresine Herhstii, which from having been grown in heat 
was what gardeners call drawn,” that is, had comparatively 
long intervals between the leaves, and a flaccid texture, a thin 
film of ice was speedily produced on the distal end of the leaf. In 
less than two minutes the whole shoot, four to five inches long, was 
observed to bend quickly downwards, forming as it did so a 
curve whose concavity was downwards. Next morning the whole 
shoot was dead. To what precise circumstances this rapid trans- 
