Francis E. Lloyd —98— Carnivorous Plants 



tirely negative, even after two weeks, though there was at length a dis- 

 tinct and unpleasant odor emitted. 



I first learned from Mr. A. G. Hamilton that Byblis harbours a 

 small insect which he called a ''buttner". In Perth I received the 

 same information from Mr. H. Stedman, who kindly took me to a 

 locality at some distance north of Perth where we found a lot 

 of plants growing. All of these were infested with a small wingless 

 capsid which turns out to be a new genus and will be described by 

 Dr. W. R. China of the British Museum (Natural History) {13 — i). 

 While small insects in general are caught by the mucilage secreted by 

 the stalked glands, this capsid moves about freely without difficulty, 

 just as do similar insects, also capsids, over the surface of Drosera 

 leaves in Australia, and of the African genus Roridula, once thought 

 to be carnivorous. How the insect manages this is a bit puzzling. It 

 is noticeable that it prefers to walk on the upper leaf surface where 

 there are very few and usually smaller glands but when alarmed it 

 progresses rapidly in any direction without becoming entangled with 

 the mucilage. Full sized insects are perhaps too big to be readily en- 

 cumbered, but the smaller ones move about just as freely. Their food 

 consists of freshly captured flies, the juices of which they suck, the re- 

 lation of insect and plant affording a sort of commensalism, but this 

 term could hardly be used in the case of Roridula (non-carnivorous) 

 the secretion from whose glands is resinous (Lloyd 1934). 



Literature Cited: 



Bruce, A. Ninian, On the activity of the glands of Byblis gigantea. Notes Roy. Bot. Gar- 

 den Edin. 16:9-14, 1905, also 17:83, 1907. 

 DiELS, L., Byblidaceae, Nat. Pfianzenfamilien. i8a. 1930. 

 DoMiN, K., Byblidaceae, a new archichlamydeous family. Contr. to the Australian flora, 



undated, but about 1920. Extracted from MS. and published separately in Acta Bot. 



Bohem. 1:3-4, 1922. 

 Fenner, see under Nepenthes. 

 Hamilton, A. G., Notes on Byblis gigantea. Proc. Linn. Soc. New South Wales 28:680- 



684, 1903. 

 Lang, F. X., Untersuchungen iiber Morphologie, Anatomic und Samenentwickelung von 



Polypompholyx und Bvblis gigantea. Flora 88:3-60, 1901. 

 Llo\T), F. E., The tannin-colloid complexes in the fruit of the persimmon. Biochem. Journ. 



1:7-41 (pi. 1-3), 191 1. 

 Lloyd, 1933 (see under E eliamphora) . 

 Lloyd, 1934 {see under Introduction). 

 Planchon, J. E., Sur la famille des Droseracees. Ann. sci. nat. bot., 3 ser., 9:79-99, 1848. 



(Contains also descriptions of Drosera carpels bearing tentacles, these being intergrades 



between normal leaves and carpels). 

 Ross, H., Byblis gigantea. Gartenflora 51 :337-339 (pl- 15°°), 1902. 



