CLASS X. 



TEN STAMINA. 



This Class has Jive Orders. 



FLY-TRAP OF VENUS. This plant is a native 

 of America, and exhibits a very curious instance of 

 vegetable irritability : the leaves which are at the bot- 

 tom of the foot-stalk are each divided into two lobes 

 at the extremity, having long teeth on the margin like 

 the antennae of insects, and within armed with six 

 spines, three on each side, and lie spread upon the 

 ground round the stem, and are so irritable, that when 

 a fly happens to light upon a leaf, it immediately folds 

 up and crushes it to death. 



Dr. Darwin, speaking of this plant, says, ' I saw it 

 on this day (Aug. 20, I7b8), in the collection of Sir 

 B. Boothby, of Ashburn-Hall, Derbyshire, and on 

 drawing a straw along the middle of the rio of the 

 leaves as they lay upon the ground round the stem, 

 each of them, in about a second of time, closed and 

 doubled up, crossing the thorns over the opposite edge 

 of the leaf, like the teeth of a spring rat trap.' 



Mr. Knight, lately Mr. Hibberts's gardener at 

 Clapham, now a nursery-man in the King's Road, 

 made an experiment of supplying this irritability with 

 fine filaments of raw beef, and that plant was more 

 luxuriant than any other ; it seems therefore probable 

 that the decomposition of animal matter is peculiarly 



