192 DROSERA ROTUNDIFOLIA. [0r X 
other cases, from half a dozen to a dozen tentacles, both 
laterally and towards the centre, were well inflected, or 
sub-inflected. Lastly, in ten other experiments, minute bits 
of meat were placed on a single gland or on two glands in 
the centre of the disc. In order that no other glands should 
touch the meat, through the inflection of the closely 
adjoining short tentacles, about half a dozen glands had been 
previously removed round the selected ones. On eight of 
these leaves from sixteen to twenty-five of the short 
surrounding tentacles were inflected in the course of one or 
two days; so that the motor impulse radiating from one or 
two of the discal glands is able to produce this much effect. 
The tentacles which had been removed are included in the 
above numbers ; for, from standing so close, they would 
certainly have been affected. On the two remaining leaves, 
almost all the short tentacles on the disc were inflected. 
With a more powerful stimulus than meat, namely a 
little phosphate of lime moistened with saliva, I have seen 
the inflection spread still farther from a single gland thus 
treated; but even in this case the three or four outer rows 
of tentacles were not affected. From these experiments it 
appears that the impulse from a single gland on the disc acts 
on a greater number of tentacles than that from a gland of 
one of the exterior elongated tentacles; and this probably 
follows, at least in part, from the impulse having to travel 
a very short distance down the pedicels of the central 
tentacles, so that it is able to spread to a considerable dis- 
tance all round. 
Whilst examining these leaves, I was struck with the fact 
that in six, perhaps seven, of them the tentacles were much 
more inflected at the distal and proximal ends of the leaf (ie. 
towards the apex and base) than on either side; and yet 
the tentacles on the sides stood as near to the gland where 
the bit of meat lay as did those at the two ends. It thus 
appeared as if the motor impulse was transmitted from the 
centre across the disc more readily in a longitudinal than in 
a transverse direction; and as this appeared a new and 
interesting fact in the physiology of plants, thirty-five fresh 
experiments were made to test its truth. Minute bits of 
meat were placed on a single gland or on a few glands, on 
the right or left side of the discs of eighteen leaves; other 
bits of the same size being placed on the distal or proximal 
ends of seventeen other leaves. Now if the motor impulse 
