With an Account of a New Species. 97 



semblance does not extend farther. The only thing common 

 to all these plants is, as Dr. Brown remarks,* that they are all 

 dicotyledonous. 



The pitchers, or tubular portion of the leaves of all the 

 species of Sarracenia, it is well known, commonly contain a 

 great number of dead insects. The manner in which they are 

 imprisoned was first distinctly explained by William Bartram,t 

 and is particularly illustrated in a letter from the late Dr. Mac- 

 bride, of South Carolina, to Sir James E. Smith, published in 

 the 12th volume of the Transactions of the Linnaean Society 

 of London.! 



The water usually found in the leaves is no doubt chiefly de- 

 rived from rains and dews, and is not, in any considerable de- 

 gree, furnished by secretion from the plant itself, as in Nepen- 

 thes distillatoria, and some other plants of the kind, in which 

 the orifice is completely closed by an operculum.^ De Can- 

 dolle|| has somehow fallen into the error of supposing that the 



* London and Edinb. Jour. Science, ^c. for Oct. 1832. 



t Travels through N. and S. Carolina, Georgia, Florida, $c. (1791 introd* 

 p. xix. 



t Read in December, 1815. See also Elliott, Sketch of the Botany of South 

 Carolina and Georgia, 2, p. 12. — " It may be sufficient here to remark that the 

 throat or orifice of these leaves is generally covered with]a saccharine secretion or 

 exudation. Immediately below the throat, for the space of nearly an inch, the 

 surface is highly polished, while the lower part of the tube is covered with hairs 

 all pointing downwards. When an insect is attracted, in the first instance, by 

 the secretion of the plant, or perhaps even by the water, descends, as it easily can 

 do, along this declining pubescence, it appears incapable of ascending by its feet 

 alone, and can only escape by a flight so perpendicular as to surpass the power of 

 most insects. Whenever they touch the bristly sides of the tube, they are preci- 

 pitated again to the bottom, and have to renew their efforts, and many insects, 

 even of a larger size, perish in this arduous and hopeless struggle.'' 



§ Sic metamorphosis folii NymphnRae in folium Snrraceni.c, ut ipsa aquam plu- 

 vialem excipiens, at rctinens extra a quas crescat ; mira nature providentia ! — 

 Linnceus, Syt. Nat. (cd. 12), p. 361 — an idea which seems to have been furnished 

 by a passage in one of Peter Collinson's letters to Linnsus, dated May I, 1765, 

 in these words : " The leaves of the two species of Sarracenia are as surprising 

 as the flowers ; for they are open tubes, contrived to colloct the rains and dews, 

 to nourish the plants in dry weather." — Correspondence of Linn. I. p. 66. 



II " Tantot il diverge dc la lige de* sonorigine, et a l'apparence d'un tube vide 

 VOL. IV. 13 



