Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/557

] the movements from irritability and the daily periodical movements, as was done till recent times; the latter, he says, occur not only in the leaves of Leguminosae, but in almost all similar pinnate leaves, and with these periodical movements of leaves he places also the periodical opening and closing of the flowers of Calendula, Cichorium, Convolvulus, and others. That these last movements are due to changes of temperature appeared to him to be proved by an experiment of Jacob Cornutus on flowers of Anemone, which, when cut off and placed in a well-closed box in a warm place, opened at an unusual time if the flower stalk only was dipped in warm water. This fact, afterwards forgotten and discovered again a few years ago, of the dependence of the movements of flowers on changes of temperature, was applied by Ray to explain the periodical movements of leaves, which, to use his own expression, fold themselves together as the cold of night draws on, and open again with the day, and as he thought that these movements are of the same kind as the movements of irritability in Mimoseae, he tries to explain how cooling has the same effect as a touch. It was natural in the existing state of science to assume that changes of temperature were the first causes of various movements, for a thrust was at that time almost the only recognised cause of motion. Hence Ray explained the movements of growing stems which are now called heliotropic by a difference of temperature on the opposite sides. A certain Dr. Sharroc had observed the stem of a plant on which he was experimenting grow towards that part of a window, where the air found free entrance through an opening; from this circumstance, and from the rapid elongation of the stems of plants growing under cover, which he ascribed to the higher temperature, Ray concluded that cold air hinders the growth of the side of a stem on which it falls, and that this side must become concave. Thus Ray used the etiolation of plants grown under cover to explain their heliotropic curvatures, as De Candolle did one hundred and forty years later, only with this difference, that he