July.] FLOWER GARDEN. 449 
the leaf was to expose the fluids of the plant to the light as well as 
to the air." 
The sensibility of this plant is worthy of admiration, that, not 
only in the evening or towards night, but at all hours of the day, 
with the least touch or concussion of air, the leaves are just like a 
tree dying, droop and complicate themselves immediately, and 
presently after recover, resuming their former position; so that a 
person would be induced to think they were really endowed with 
the sense of feeling. 
The cause of this seemed so hard to be discovered, that a curious 
Malabarian philosopher, upon his observing the nature of this plant, 
without being able to discover the cause of its sensibility, ran mad, 
just as Aristotle is said to have flung himself headlong into the 
sea, because he could not comprehend the reason of its ebbing; and 
flowing. 
These plants are more or less susceptible of the touch, according 
to the warmth of the air in which they grow, being always more 
irritable in proportion to the heat thereof. 
The light is not the only cause of their expansion, nor the dark- 
ness of their contraction, for they are often closed in the afternoon 
two or three hours before the sun descends the horizon; and if the 
frames in which they are kept be, in the forepart of the day, covered 
for hours, so as to render the place completely dark, yet the leaves 
will continue their expansion. 
Those plants which are placed in the greatest warmth in winter, 
continue vigorous and retain their faculty of contracting on being 
touched; but those that are in a moderate warmth have little or no 
motion. 
There are eighty -four species of mimosa described; two, with 
simple leaves; six, with leaves simply pinnate; three, with bigemi- 
nate or tergeminate leaves; nine, with leaves conjugate, and at the 
same time pinnate; and sixty-four with doubly-pinnate leaves; 
several of the species are more or less sensitive, but the far greater 
number not at all. 
Venus^s Fly-Trap. 
The Bionsea musdpula, or Venus's fly-trap, is one of the most 
extraordinary productions of nature. In this plant there is an 
astonishing contrivance to prevent the depredations of insects: the 
leaves are numerous, generally bending downwards, or rather 
spreading upon tiie surface of the earth, and placed in a circular 
order; each leaf is divided, as it were, into two joints, the lower 
flat, longish, two edged, and inclining to heart-shaped; some con- 
sider this lower joint a winged petiole, similar to that on an orange 
leaf. The upper joint consists of two lobes, each semi-oval, the 
margins furnished with stift" hairs like the eye lashes, locking into 
each other when the lobes close, like the teeth of a rat-trap, to 
which the lobes, marginal hairs, and the manner of their closing, 
bear a particular resemblance. The interior of the lobes is very 
irritable, but more particularly so in warm weather, when, if an 
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