LETTEKS FROM ALABAMA. 
115 
scarcely to affect the general filiform appearance. 
The flowers are inconspicuous, closely set on the 
stem, without any footstalk, single, of a pale 
greenish hue. I am told that if a bunch be torn 
off, and flung into a tree, it will readily take root 
and spread widely and rapidly. Pursh says that 
its fibres, divested of their outside coating, make 
excellent mattresses, and are a good substitute for 
horse-hair, I have used the dry plant to stuff 
preserved skins, in lack of other material. 
Perhaps of all that changeable race, the Fimgi, 
there is none more changeable than a very curious 
species which is not uncommon on old fallen logs. 
It first appears oozing from crevices, on each side 
of which it spreads over a space of several inches. 
It then appears like a mass of very thick cream, 
which has been pressed through a hair sieve, and 
is sufficiently consistent to retain the irregularity 
of surface caused by the interstices ; its colour is a 
brilliant gambpge-yellow. In about twelve hours, 
it has become much thicker and harder, but still 
soft enough to be squeezed by the finger ; the inside 
is now nearly black, the surface alone being yellow. 
In twelve hours more it has changed to a mass 
of impalpable dry pow’der, of a dark olive-brown 
colom', which looks and feels like very fine snuff, 
the surface being of a dirty white or drab hue ; so 
that no one who had not marked it would possibly 
recognise the creamy mass which he had seen 
twenty-four hours before. 
Different species of Sensitive Plants are very 
numerous in the woods ; a trailing spinous species 
{Schranhia uncinata) is very irritable ; the slightest 
touch makes the leaflets close together instantly. 
It is called the Sensitive Brier. Others only close 
I 2 
