INSECTIVOROUS PLANTS. 201 



those who were not sagacious enough to bring out 

 their full meaning or importance. Vegetable mor- 

 phology, dimly apprehended by Linnaeus, initiated by 

 Caspar Frederick Wolff, and again, independently 

 in successive generations, by Goethe and by De Can- 

 dolle, offers a parallel instance. The botanists of 

 Goethe's day could not see any sense, advantage, or 

 practical application, to be made of the proposition 

 that the parts of a blossom answer to leaves ; and so 

 the study of homologies had long to wait. Until 

 lately it appeared to be of no consequence whatever 

 (except, perhaps, to the insects) whether Drosera and 

 Sarracenia caught flies or not ; and even Dionaea ex- 

 cited only unreflecting wonder as a vegetable anomaly. 

 As if there were real anomalies in Nature, and some 

 one plant possessed extraordinary powers denied to 

 all others, and (as was supposed) of no importance to 

 itself ! 



That most expert of fly-catchers, Dionaea, of which 

 so much has been written and so little known until 

 lately, came very near revealing its secret to Solander 

 and Ellis a hundred years ago, and doubtless to John 

 Bartram, our botanical pioneer, its probable discoverer, 

 who sent it to Europe. Ellis, in his published letter 

 to Linnaeus, with which the history begins, described 

 the structure and action of the living trap correctly ; 

 noticed that the irritability which called forth the 

 quick movement closing the trap, entirely resided in 

 the few small bristles of its upper face ; that this 

 whole surface was studded with glands, which proba- 

 bly secreted a liquid ; and that the trap did not open 

 again when an insect was captured, even upon the 



