"In alluding, incidentally, so much to cleanliness, I give it/' says an eminent writer, "a prominent place in the elements of success. A great point is gained when we come to look upon a plant as an organized existence very different from a clod or a stone, and with powers of irritability frequently approaching that of sensation in animals. I have seen many gaze4n wonder at the mysteries of the Sensitive Plant (the Mimosa pudica), whose leaflets droop at the slightest touch, and from that day become more earnest and careful cultivators. I have seen dozens of boys and girls watching the leaflets of various Acacias, the Cassia corymbosa, and even the common French Bean, folding back and going to sleep at night, and I have been assured that they in future experienced a love and a sympathy for plants which they never felt before. When we find our young people talking of the shaking vagaries of the side leaves of the Hedysarum gyrans, while the terminal leaflet alternately rouses itself into wakefulness, and then lulls itself again to drowsy repose; when you hear them making out lists of flowers that open and shut at certain hours and in certain states of the atmosphere, some at mid-day, and others at midnight, or of others that throw off their perfume in compliment to the sun, while others hoard up such treasure in honor of the stars and moon; when you hear learned discussions on how mineral and vegetable poisons exercise a similar and as destructive an influence upon plants as upon animals; and when you listen to expressions of delight at the beautiful harmony and reciprocity existing between the vegetable and the animal world, then, indeed, may we expect to see beautiful plants more generally in windows, and the culture of them attended with a charm and an interest never formerly known".