clarke] DIRECT METHODS OF STUDYING NATURE 309 



the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The plant 

 consists mainly of a rosette of glistening leaves touching the ground, 

 and these leaves are at once the means of attracting, retaining, and 

 digesting the insects. The margins of the leaves are slightly incurved 

 upon the upper surface, and there are present two kinds of glands- 

 one that manufactures a sticky fluid, and the other that manufactures 

 a digestive fluid resembling in properties the gastric juice found in 

 animals. When an insect alights on a leaf, the edges of the leaf 

 slowly curl over, a quantity of sticky fluid is poured out, and the in- 

 sect is kept a prisoner. The presence of the insect also causes a 

 quantity of the digestive fluid to be poured out, and soon the body of 

 the insect is dissolved and digested, and only a few indigestible parts 

 left. The name "butterwort" was given to the plant because it was 

 found that its leaves when placed in milk curdled it. In South 

 Wales, butterwort leaves have been used as a substitute for rennet, 

 and Linnaeus states that the Lapps used it for curdling milk. 



The other bog-garden represents a piece of Dartmoor. Sundews, 

 marsh red-rattle, asphodel, and many other plants brought from 

 Dartmoor are growing in it, and some soil was brought with the 

 plants, in order that they might grow in their native soil. [At this 

 place in the original article the writer describes well-known laboratory 

 experiments such as measuring plant growth and testing influence of 

 light and gravity.] 



Many people are familiar with an incubator in which chickens are 

 hatched, but not with one in which seeds are germinated. So many 

 seedlings are wanted for different purposes by the girls that a seed- 

 incubator has been made, in which seeds can be quickly germinated. 

 Some of the girls draw the seedlings, some use them for experiments 

 in connection with the influence of light on growth, and some place 

 the seedlings in food solutions. The food solution consists of water 

 in which definite quantities of certain chemicals have been dissolved 1 . 

 A normal food solution contains all the food a plant needs, and there 

 are in the laboratory at the present time oaks, seven years old, which 

 were grown from acorns, and have never been in soil. The biggest 

 one measures four and a half feet from the bottom of the roots to the 

 top of the stem, and has about twenty branches. 



Other interesting perennials in food solution are sycamore, beech, 

 birch, chestnuts, hazel, and hornbeam. Every autumn they lose their 



['Evidently the solution described in Vol. I, No. 2 of Tin NATI 1; 1 STUDY 

 Review.] 



