236 DROSEEA ROTUNDIFOLIA. CHAT X. 



ten other experiments, minute bits of meat were placed 

 on a single gland or on two glands in the centre of the 

 disc. In order that no other glands should touch 

 the meat, through the inflection of the closely adjoin- 

 ing short tentacles, about half a dozen glands had 

 been previously removed round the selected ones. On 

 eight of these leaves from sixteen to twenty-five of the 

 short surrounding tentacles were inflected in the course 

 of one or two days ; so that the motor impulse radiat- 

 ing from one or two of the discal glands is able to 

 produce this much effect. The tentacles which had 

 been removed are included in the above numbers ; for, 

 from standing so close, they would certainly have been 

 affected. On the two remaining leaves, almost all the 

 short tentacles on the disc were inflected. With a 

 more powerful stimulus than meat, namely a little 

 phosphate of lime moistened with saliva, I have seen 

 the inflection spread still farther from a single gland 

 thus treated ; but even in this case the three or four 

 outer rows of tentacles were not affected. From these 

 experiments it appears that the impulse from a single 

 gland on the disc acts on a greater number of ten- 

 tacles than that from a gland of one of the exterior 

 elongated tentacles ; and this probably follows, at 

 least in part, from the impulse having to travel a very 

 short distance down the pedicels of the central ten- 

 tacles, so that it is able to spread to a considerable 

 distance all round. 



Whilst examining these leaves, I was struck with the 

 fact that in six, perhaps seven, of them the tentacles 

 were much more inflected at the distal and proxi- 

 mal ends of the leaf (i. e. towards the apex and base) 

 than on either side ; and yet the tentacles on the sides 

 stood as near to the gland where -ihe bit of meat Jny 

 us did those at the two ends. It thus appeared t;a 



