SOME PLANTS WHICH ENTRAP JXSM'TS. 



425 



(his subject. Our commonest sun-dew in the eastern Tinted States 

 (Drosera rotundifolia) is a delicate Little plant without stem— a mere 

 rosette of long-stalked Leaves with rounded blades. Bristling from 

 the upper surface of the leaf stand thirty or forty stout hairs nearly 

 as long as the diameter of the Leaf. At the end of each hair is a 

 swollen gland surrounded by a globule of viscid jelly, the whole scarcely 

 as large as a pinhead. There are few more beautiful objects in the 



Fig. 8. 'Ihe East I.vman Pitciier-plaxt. 



plant world than a leaf of the sun-dew with its clear beads of jelly 

 flashing in the sunlight against a rich setting of green and red. This 

 splendid sight lures the small gnat or fly into contact with one or 

 more of the beads and gives the jelly a tenacious hold on some par- 

 ticular leg or wing. The contact causes a disturbance to be set up 

 in the leaf which brings the other hairs to bend towards the ones 

 which have secured prey. If the insect caught is a minute one only 

 a few of the hairs will be aggregated in this manner, but if a larger 



