74 



ANIMALS OF LAND AND SEA 



59 



The common pitcher-plant Hves partly on the insects so 

 unfortunate as to fall into the water in its pitchers which are 

 there digested and their juices then absorbed by the inner 



surface of the leaf. These 

 masses of dead insects in 

 process of digestion have 

 been discovered by enter- 

 prising living insects which 

 find in them a store of ex- 

 cellent food for the support 

 of their own young. In the 

 late summer cut a few leaves 

 from a pitcher-plant, slit 

 them open, and pour the 

 contents out on a white 

 plate. Among the packed 

 remains of insects you will 

 see mosquito "wigglers," a 

 number of slender and trans- 

 lucent grubs, commonly sev- 

 eral to a pitcher, and pos- 

 sibly you will also find a 

 large fat whitish maggot, 

 and a small caterpillar en- 

 cased in the dead remains 

 of insects. 



The ''wigglers" are the 



young of a very pretty mos- 



'^^dut a"d ufc Sr„r°l kTSS quito which breeds^nowhere 



Figs. 59, 60. 

 nodul 

 shark. 



For explanations of the figures see p. xiii. 



else. You can raise these 

 safely in your house as 

 they do not bite. In the 

 winter you can find these "wigglers" frozen solid in the cones 

 of ice within the pitchers, and if you melt these cones they 

 come once more to life. The slender and translucent grubs 

 are the young of a kind of gnat found nowhere else, though 



