912 DROSERA ROTUNDIFOLIA. [Cuap. XI. 
CHAPTER XI. 
RECAPITULATION OF THE CHIEF OBSERVATIONS ON 
DROSERA ROTUNDIFOLIA.* 
As summaries have been given to most of the chapters, it 
will be sufficient here to recapitulate, as briefly as I.can, the 
chief points. In the first chapter a preliminary sketch was 
given of the structure of the leaves, and of the manner in 
which they capture insects. This is effected by drops of 
extremely viscid fluid surrounding the glands and by the 
inward movement of the tentacles. As the plants gain most 
of their nutriment by this means, their roots are very poorly 
developed; and they often grow in places where hardly any 
other plant except mosses can exist. The glands have the 
power of absorption, besides that of secretion. They are 
extremely sensitive to various stimulants, namely repeated 
touches, the pressure of minute particles, the absorption of 
animal matter and of various fluids, heat, and galvanic 
action. A tentacle with a bit of raw meat on the gland has 
been seen to begin bending in 10 s., to be strongly incurved 
in 5 m., and to reach the centre of the leaf in half an hour. 
The blade of the leaf often becomes so much inflected that it 
forms a cup, enclosing any object placed on it. 
A gland, when excited, not only sends some influence 
down its own tentacle, causing it to bend, but likewise 
to the surrounding tentacles, which become incurved; so 
that the bending place can be acted on by an impulse 
received from opposite directions, namely from the gland on 
the summit of the same tentacle, and from one or more 
glands of the neighbouring tentacles. Tentacles, when 
inflected, re-expand after a time, and during this process the 
glands secrete less copiously or become dry. As soon as 
they begin to secrete again, the tentacles are ready to re-act ; 
and this may be repeated at least three, probably many 
more times, 
* [The reader consulting this list of additions in the present 
chapter without having read the edition given at the beginning of the 
foregoing pages should look at the book.—F, D.] 
