Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/152

 *[Footnote: east side of the Alleghany mountains, as far north as the 38th parallel, and on the west side even as far as the 41st parallel. Gleditschia monosperma ceases two degrees farther to the south. These are the limits of the Mimosa form in the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere we find beyond the tropic of Capricorn simple leaved Acacias as far as Van Diemen Island; and even the Acacia cavenia, described by Claude Gay, grows in Chili between the 30th and 37th degrees of south latitude. (Molina, Storia Naturale del Chili, 1782, p. 174.) Chili has no true Mimosa, but it has three species of Acacia. Even in the north part of Chili the Acacia cavenia only grows to a height of twelve or thirteen feet; and in the south, near the sea coast, it hardly rises a foot above the ground. In South America, north of the equator, the most excitable Mimosas were (next to Mimosa pudica), M. dormiens, M. somnians, and M. somniculosa. Theophrastus (iv. 3) and Pliny (xii. 10) mention the irritability of the African sensitive plant; but I find the first description of the South American sensitive plants (Dormideras) in Herrera, Decad. II. lib. iii. cap. 4. The plant first attracted the attention of the Spaniards in 1518, in the savannahs on the isthmus near Nombre de Dios: "parece como cosa sensible;" and it was said that the leaves ("de echura de una pluma de pajaros") only contracted on being touched with the finger, and not if touched with a piece of wood. In the small swamps which surround the town of Mompox on the Magdalena, we discovered a beautiful aquatic Mimosacea (Desmanthus lacustris). It is figured in our Plantes équinoxiales, T. i.]*