INSECTIVOROUS PLANTS. 47 



hairs in the centre of each lobe of the leaf. He was also unable to 

 bring himself to believe that Nature intended the plant " to receive 

 some nourishment from the animals it seizes," and he accordingly de- 

 clared that, as soon as the insects ceased to struggle, the leaf opened 

 and let them go. He only saw in these wonderful actions an extreme 

 case of sensitiveness in the leaves ; and he consequently regarded the 

 capture of the disturbing insects as merely accidental, and of no im- 

 portance to the plant. 



Linnteus's authority caused his statements to be faith fully copied 

 from book to book. 



Sixty years after Linnteus wrote, an able botanist, the Rev. Dr. M. 

 A, Curtis (who died in 1872), lived at Wilmington, North Carolina, 

 the headquarters of this very local plant. In 1834 he published an 

 account of it in the Boston Journal of Natural History, which is a 

 model of accurate scientific observation. He said : "Each half of the 

 leaf is a little concave on the inner side, where there are placed three 

 delicate, hair-like organs, in such order that an insect can hardly 

 traverse it without interfering with one of them, when (he two sides 

 suddenly collapse, and inclose the prey, with a force surpassing an 

 insect's efforts to escape. The fringes of hairs on the opposite sides 

 of a leaf interlace like the fingers of two hands clasped together. The 

 sensitiveness resides only in these hair-like processes on the inside, as 

 the leaf may be touched or pressed in another part without sensible 

 effects. The little prisoner is not crushed and suddenly destroyed, for 

 I have often liberated captive flies and spiders which sped away as 

 fast as fear or joy could carry them. At other times, I have found 

 them enveloped in a fluid of mucilaginous consistence which seems to 

 act as a solvent, the insects being more or less consumed in it. This 

 circumstance has suggested the possibility of their being made sub- 

 sei'vient to the nourishment of the plant through an apparatus of ab- 

 sorbent vessels in the leaves." 



To Ellis belongs the credit of divining the purpose of the capture 

 of insects hj t\\Q Dionoea. But Curtis made out the details of mechan- 

 ism by ascertaining the seat of the sensitiveness of the leaves ; and he 

 also pointed out that the secretion was not a lure exuded before the 

 capture, but a true digestive fluid poured out like our own gastric 

 juice after the ingestion of food. (Prof. Gray quotes Dr. Curtis's 

 observations on the Dioncea in his " Genera of the Plants of the United 

 States," vol. i., p. 196, 1849, without comment; and his plate of the 

 plant does not show any of the important sensitive spines.) 



The investigation of this curious question again rested until 1868, 

 when it was taken up by Mr. Canby, who was then staying in the 

 Dioncea district. He found that the leaf had the power of dissolving 

 animal matter, and that small pieces of beef that were fed to it were 

 completely dissolved and absorbed; the leaf opening again with a dry 

 surface and ready for another meal, though with an appetite somewhat 



