300 DARWINIANA. 



der instead of the summit only. Very curious, and 

 even somewhat painful, is the sight when a fly, alight- 

 ing upon the central dew-tipped bristles, is held as 

 fast as by a spider's web ; while the efforts to escape 

 not only entangle the insect more hopelessly as they 

 exhaust its strength, but call into action the surround- 

 ing bristles, which, one by one, add to the number of 

 the bonds, each by itself apparently feeble, but in 

 their combination so effectual that the fly may be 

 likened to the sleeping Gulliver made fast in the tiny 

 but multitudinous toils of the Liliputians. Any- 

 body who can believe that such an apparatus was not 

 intended to capture flies might say the same of a spi- 

 der's web. 



Is the intention here to be thought any the less 

 real because there are other species of Drosera which 

 are not so perfectly adapted for fly-catching, owing 

 to the form of their leaves and the partial or total 

 want of cooperation of their scattered bristles ? One 

 such species, D. filiformis, the thread-leaved sundew, 

 is not uncommon in this country, both north and south 

 of the district that Dionsea locally inhabits. Its leaves 

 are long and thread-shaped, beset throughout with 

 glutinous gland-tipped bristles, but wholly destitute 

 of a blade. Flies, even large ones, and even moths 

 and butterflies, as Mrs. Treat and Mr. Canby affirm 

 (in the American J\ T atu? 7 aUst), get stuck fast to these 

 bristles, whence they seldom escape. Accidental as 

 such captures are, even these thread-shaped leaves re- 

 spond more or less to the contact, somewhat in the 

 manner of their brethren. In Mr. Canby's recent and 

 simple experiments, made at Mr. Darwin's suggestion, 



