SOMK I'LANTS WHICH ENTRAP INSECTS. 



42 1 



jection shaped like the tail of a fish. The hood is marked opposite 



the mouth by a number of translucent snots which sonic botanist lias 



imagined are 



heads in a wih 



f 



false windows, against which entrapped 



bump their 



effort to escape, being thus diverted from the real 

 opening ' 



In the swamps and along the streams of the rich tropical forests 

 of Borneo, Java and Ceylon are found the East Indian pitcher-plants 

 (Nepenthes), a group in many ways more highly developed than their 

 American relatives, for there are forty species of them, all plants grow- 

 ing to a considerable size and several of them forming important 

 constituents of the vegetation. 

 The stem is erect or half -climb- 

 ing, with long narrow leaves ta- 

 pering to slender ends, wdiich will 

 twine like a tendril about any 

 supporting twig or stick and then 

 give rise to a single pitcher, or 

 failing to find a support, will fail 

 too to produce the pitcher. In 

 variety of design, brilliance of color 

 and showy contrast of spots and 

 stripes the East Indian pitchers 

 far outdo those of the American 

 plants. They are provided too 

 with elaborate lids and covers 

 which here have a double meaning, 

 for the pitcher is not filled with 

 rain-water, but with a secreted 

 water of its own, which must not 

 be diluted by the rain, as it contains 

 precious substances given out with 

 the water from glands in the bot- 

 tom of the pitcher. The most 

 important of these substances is 

 a digestive principle much re- 

 sembling the pancreatic juice of the human stomach; and scarcely less 

 important is a faint trace of hydrochloric acid, without the presence 

 of which the digestive juice can not work, for it is not here for any 

 idle purpose, but for the business of digesting quickly the abundant 

 prey which tropical insect life affords. A fly which falls into a glass 

 of water is often able to escape because the close-set hairs covering its 

 body do not permit it to become thoroughly wet. In the liquid of the 

 pitchers is another substance known as azerin, the property of wdiich 

 is to cause any hairy surface to become quickly wet, which means for 

 the flv sure drowning. 



Fig. 4. Drummond's Pitcher-plant of 

 the South, with its Covering Lid and 

 Showy Marking. 



