110 DROSERA ROTUNDIFOLIA. [CHAP VI. 
would survive if fed on fibrin alone, but Dr. Sanderson has 
no doubt longer than on gelatine, and it would be hardly 
rash to predict, judging from the effects on Drosera, that 
albumen would be found more nutritious than fibrin. 
Globulin likewise belongs to the Proteids, forming another 
sub-group, and this substance, though containing some 
matter which excited Drosera rather strongly, was hardly 
attacked by the secretion, and was very little or very slowly 
attacked by gastric juice. How far globulin would be 
nutritious to animals is not known. We thus see how 
differently the above specified several digestible substances 
act on Drosera; and we may infer, as highly probable, that 
they would in like manner be nutritious in very different 
degrees both to Drosera and to animals. 
The glands of Drosera absorb matter from living seeds, 
which are injured or killed by the secretion. They likewise 
absorb matter from pollen, and from fresh leaves; and this 
is notoriously the case with the stomachs of vegetable- 
feeding animals. Drosera is properly an insectivorous 
plant; but as pollen cannot fail to be often blown on to the 
glands, as will occasionally the seeds and leaves of sur- 
rounding plants, Drosera is, to a certain extent, a vegetable- 
feeder. 
Finally the experiments recorded in this chapter show 
us that there is a remarkable accordance in the power of 
digestion between the gastric juice of animals with its 
pepsin and hydrochloric acid and the secretion of Drosera 
with its ferment and acid belonging to the acetic series. 
We can therefore hardly doubt that the ferment in both 
cases is closely similar, if not identically the same. That 
a plant and an animal should pour forth the same, or nearly 
the same, complex secretion, adapted for the same purpose of 
digestion, is a new and wonderful fact in physiology. But 
I shall have to recur to this subject in the fifteenth chapter, 
in my concluding remarks on the Droseracew, 
