the vorticellae. They have simply coiled themselves upon
their slender stems, have drawn in their cilia, and are feigning death.
In a few seconds one, and then another, will erect its stem; finally,
the entire colony will "come to life" and resume feeding until they are
again frightened, when they will at once resort to letisimulation.

Death-feigners are found in four divisions of animal life; viz., among
insects, birds, mammals, and reptiles. Indeed, the most gifted
letisimulants in the entire animal kingdom are to be observed in the
great snake family. The so-called "black viper" of the middle United
States is the most accomplished death-feigner that I have ever seen; its
make-believe death struggles, in which it writhes and twists in seeming
agony and finally turns upon its back and assumes _rigor mortis_, cannot
be surpassed by any actor "on the boards" in point of pantomimic
excellence.

I do not know of any fish which has acquired this strategic habit, but
the evidence is not all in, and some day, perhaps, death-feigners may be
found even among fishes.[111]

[111] Letisimulation, apparently, is not confined to animals; we see
that certain plants have acquired a habit that is strikingly like
death-feigning. We are apt to regard the plants as being non-sentient,
yet there is an abundance of evidence in favor of the doctrine that
vegetable life is, to a certain extent, percipient. Darwin has shown
conclusively that plant life is as subject to the great law of
evolution as animal life; he has also demonstrated, in his
observations of insectivorous plants--the sun-dew (_Drosera
rotundifolia_) especially--that these plants recognize at once the
presence of foreign bodies when they are brought in contact with their
sensitive glands;[A] he has likewise shown that plants, in the
phenomenon known as circumnutation, evince a percipient sensitiveness
that is as delicate as it is remarkable.[B] Hence, we need not feel
surprised when we find, even in a plant, evidences of such a
widespread stratagem as letisimulation. The champion death-feigner of
the vegetable kingdom is a South American plant, _Mimosa pudica_. In
the United States, where in some localities it has been naturalized,
this plant is known as the "sensitive plant." A wild variety, _Mimosa
strigilosa_, is native to some of the Southern States, but is by no
means as sensitive as its South American congener. The last-mentione