170 
LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
SENSITIVE PLANT. 
CHASTITY. 
The Sensitive Plant is so called from its 
motions imitating the sensibility of animal life. 
The plants of this genus naturally contract 
themselves in the evening, and expand with 
the morning’s light, and they are still more re¬ 
markable for shrinking from external violence, 
and folding up their leaves at the mere approach 
of one’s hand. 
Whence does it happen that the plant, which well 
We name the Sensitive, should move and feel ? 
Whence know her leaves to answer her command, 
And with quick horror fly the neighbouring hand ? 
Prior, 
These are questions which naturalists have 
not yet been able to answer. Darwin asks: 
“ May it not be owing to a numbness, or para- 
lysis, consequent to too violent irritation, like 
the fainting of animals from pain or fatigue ?” 
