102 THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS 
But absence of light is not the only cause of the 
folding up of flowers. Many, both cultivated and wild 
flowerS; are closed by the middle of the day. The com- 
mon goat’s beard is frequently called by country people 
go-to-bed-at-noon, and the little pimpernel is safely 
enclosed in its calyx by twelve oTlock, while many a 
handsome garden flower shuts up during the afternoon. 
The causes of these differences have not yet revealed 
themselves to the naturalists. Linnseus enumerated the 
regular times of opening and closing of forty-six flowers, 
but as these observations were made at Upsal, in Sweden, 
they do not exactly accord with the same flowers in our 
latitude. He also divides flowers into three kinds: ist, 
Meteoric flowers, which being dependent upon the moist- 
ure or other circumstances of the atmosphere, are not 
punctual in their periods of expansion and closing; 2 nd, 
Tropical flowers, which opening at morning and folding 
up when the sun goes down, close earlier or later as the 
length of the day increases or declines ; and, lastly. 
Equinoctial blossoms, which unfold regularly at a stated 
hour, and have generally a determinate hour for com- 
mencing their periodical sleep. 
Linnseus’s dial of flowers, by which the time was shown 
by the opening or folding of blossoms throughout the 
day, has always been interesting to lovers of gardens. 
Mrs. Hemans has a beautiful poem on the subject, of 
which the two following verses are the commencement: 
’Twas a lovely thought to mark the hours 
As they floated in light away. 
By the opening and the folding flowers, 
As tliey laugh to the summer’s day. 
Thus had each moment its own rich hue. 
And its graceful cup and bell. 
In whose coloured vase might sleep the dew, 
Like a pearl in an ocean shell.” 
But that this poetical invention did not originate in 
Linnaeus, we learn from a passage taken from Marvell’s 
poem, of the Garden — a poem less generally known than 
that of Mrs. Heman’s, and of some of the thoughts of 
