Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/356

 326 filament may be touched without this effect, provided no concussion be given to the whole. After a while the filament retires gradually, and may again be stimulated; and when each petal, with its annexed filament, is fallen to the ground, the latter on being touched shows as much sensibility as ever. See Tracts on Nat. History, 165. I have never detected any sympathy between the filaments, nor is any thing of the kind expressed in the paper just mentioned, though Dr. Darwin, from some unaccountable misapprehension, has quoted me to that effect. It is still more wonderful that the celebrated Bonnet, as mentioned in Senebier's Physiologie Végétale, v. 5. 105, should have observed this phænomenon in the Barberry so very inaccurately as to compare it to the relaxation of a spring, and that the ingenious Senebier himself, in quoting me, p. 103, for having ascertained the lower part only of each filament to be irritable, should express himself as follows:—"It has not yet been proved that the movement of the stamens is attended with the contraction of the filaments; which nevertheless was the first proof necessary to have been given