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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Here are pitfalls, then, not very unlike those of the American 

 pitcher-plant in their mode of decoying victims and preventing their 

 escape, but far advanced over them in their action, for the digestive 

 juice yields up the nourishing substance of the insect much more 

 rapidly than does the process of decay, and far more economically too, 

 thus increasing the amount of the plant 's food, and thereby its abilities 

 for growth and reproduction. 



The closed trap and the pitchered leaf are not the only devices for 

 insect capture which we find among plants; they also possess devices 

 which man has closely paralleled in his invention of fly-paper. These 



Fig. 5. Leaves of the Parkot's-beak Pitcher plant, with its Hidden Mouth. The 

 coloration is white and red. 



are, in general, sticky secretions borne either upon a flat leaf surface 

 or on the ends of hairs arising from leaves. The plants possessing 

 snares of this sort are more numerous than those with pitchers, and 

 quite as successful as the latter in obtaining a generous supply of 

 nitrogenous food. 



Simplest of this class of the insectivorous plants is the butterwort 

 (Pinguicula) , a small annual, not unlike some of our commonest violets 

 in appearance. A dweller in high mountains and the cold bogs of the 

 north, it is particularly well known to every one who has climbed 



