384 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



little insect was cut from the plant, put into water, and the leaf on 

 which the insect was struggling placed under the microscope about 

 six o'clock in the evening, and watched until eleven, by which time 

 life was undoubtedly extinct. During these hours the fight for exist- 

 ence was most interesting, the tentacles one by one discharging their 

 fluid, first by casting drops between the wings an almost invariable 

 proceeding thus destroying their usefulness by gumming them firmly 

 together (as in Figs. 3, 4). Then the tips of the tentacles, by this 



Fig. 6. 



Fig. 7. 



Fig. 9. 



time so much excited as to have quite lost their spherical form, are 

 inserted between the joints about the head, and among the hairs of 

 the feet and legs (as in Figs. 5, 6, 7), the stronger members being 

 firmly pinioned by the stronger tentacles (as Fig. 8), while the small 

 hairs are discharging their fluid. This fluid seems to be somewhat 

 tenacious. 



Small seeds and bits of sand are sometimes caught in the same 

 manner, but rather daintily, as if the plant merely 

 wished to see if it were worth while or not (as in 

 Fig. 9). I have never seen them inclosed by the 

 hairs, as are the animal substances. 



These are some of the things that I have seen. 



I do not know what may be the motive of the 



plant ; what it does with the insect, the last 



stage of whose strange eventful history I have 



so often seen in a dry, withered carcass, or a 



few detached and macerated limbs (Fig. 10). 



I do know, however, that the plant begins its 



depredatory career as early as the unfolding of 



the second pair of leaves from the cotyledons, 



and continues it up to the time of the first frosts. 



And so, having come to where, for me, the " thus far " ends and 



the " no farther" begins, I beg to call the attention of those interested 



in insectivorous plants to the Petunia, which fills every waste place in 



our gardens. 



Fig. 10. 



