in church-history, is the eve or next day before any solemn feast; because then Christians were wont to watch, fast, and pray, in their churches.

VIGILS of Plants, a term under which botanists comprehend the precise time of the day in which the flowers of different plants open, expand, and shut.

As all plants do not flower in the same season, or month; in like manner, those which flower the same day, in the same place, do not open and shut precisely at the same hour. Some open in the morning, as the lily flowers, and compound flowers with flat spreading petals; others at noon, as the mallows; and a third set in the evening, or after sunset, as some geraniums and opuntias: the hour of shutting is equally determined. Of those which open in the morning, some shut soon after, while others remain expanded till night.

The hours of opening, like the time of flowering, seem to vary, according to the species of the plant, the temperature of the climate, and that of the season. Flowers, whose extreme delicacy would be hurt by the strong impressions of an ardent sun, do not open till night; those which require a moderate degree of heat to elevate their juices; in other words, whose juices do not rise but in the morning or evening, do not expand till then; whilst those which need a more lively heat for the same purpose, expand at noon, when the sun is in his meridian strength. Hence it is, that the heat of the air being greater between the tropics than elsewhere, plants which are transported from those climates into the cold or temperate climates of Europe, expand their flowers much later than in their native soil. Thus, a flower which opens in summer at six o'clock in the morning at Senegal, will not open at the same season in France and England till eight or nine, nor in Sweden till ten.

Linnaeus distinguishes by the general name of solar (flores solares) all those flowers which observe a determinate time in opening and shutting. These flowers are again divided, from certain circumstances, into three species, or kinds:

Equinoctial flowers (flores aquinoctiales) are such as open and shut at all seasons, at a certain fixed or determinate hour.

Tropical flowers (flores tropicae) are such whose whole hour of opening is not fixed at all seasons, but accelerated or retarded according as the length of the day is increased or diminished.

Meteorous flowers (flores meteorici) are such whose whole hour of expansion depends upon the dry or humid state of the air, and the greater or less pressure of the atmosphere. Of this kind is the Siberian fox-thistle, which shuts at night if the ensuing day is to be clear and serene, and opens if it is to be cloudy and rainy. In like manner the African marigold, which in dry serene weather opens at six or seven in the morning, and shuts at four o'clock in the afternoon, is a sure indication that rain will fall during the course of the day, when it continues shut after seven.