4 
results from the figure of the flower, and, as we have 
said, is strictly mechanical.” 
This tribe also exhibits the phenomenon of what 
Linnaeus calls “ the sleep of the plant,” and to one 
of the species we are indebted for his first observation 
of the fact. “ A friend had presented him with some 
seeds of one of these plants, which he sowed in his 
green-house, and they soon produced two beautiful 
flowers. His gardener was absent when he first re¬ 
marked them, and in the evening he took him with 
a lantern to see them, but the flowers were nowhere 
to be found, so that he himself thought they had been 
destroyed by some accident; but, to his great surprise, 
next morning he found his flowers just where they had 
been the day before; that evening, too, they were not 
to be seen, but the next morning they looked as fresh 
as ever. The gardener thought these could not be 
the same flowers, but must have blown since: Linnaeus, 
however, was not so easily satisfied, but, as soon as it 
was dark, he once more visited the plant; and, after 
lifting up all the leaves, one by one, he found the two 
flowers folded up, and so closely concealed, that at first 
sight it was impossible to discover what they were.” 
