POtYANDRlA. MONOGYNIA, 11 



^ule 5-celIed, 5-vaIved, many-seeded, valves 

 septiferous in the centre. 



Herbaceous plants growing in sphagnous marshes; 

 leaves radical alternate, deformed, half-way sheathing at 

 the base, tubular, tube open above, attenuated and imper- 

 forate below, the orifice partly covered by an inflected 

 lamina or lid, upper part of the tube dorsally alated, 

 inner surface of the lower part and operculum, retrorsely 

 pilose, so as to entangle and prevent the escape of flies 

 and other small insects which attempt to shelter within 

 the lubes; scapes 1-flowered, flowers large, red or yellow; 

 antiiers oblong, adnate to the filaments; seeds rather 

 large than minute; somewhat scabrous. 



Species. 1. S. purpurea. Obs. The most northern 

 species of the genus, extending to Canada. Leaves ven- 

 tricosef. 



t The tubes of this si^ecies, as well as of all the following, are 

 conrimonly crowded with dead flies and other insects, perishing 

 in imprisonment by one of the wonderful but simple accidents 

 of nature;— a lesson for the incautious'- -but no proof of in- 

 stinct or necessity in the passive Sarracenia v.hich could pro- 

 bably well maintain its vegetation without the aid of dead in- 

 sects, a remark equally applicable to many other plants which 

 accidentally prove fatal to "insects, such as the wonderful Dio. 

 n.eUy which in its native swamps as frequently catches straws 

 as flies, and will equally enfold any thing, so subject is it in 

 this respect to the blindness of accident. Of wiiat intrinsic 

 benefit are flies to a. few of the flowers of .isclepias Syriaca and 

 Jl. incaniata, for the accident here is far from being universal, 

 and to the smaller flowered species impossible from the mi- 

 nuteness of the organ which pro\es occasionally an insect trap 

 in the larger ones. The same remarks are also applic:.ble 

 to the flowers of the genus Apocrjnum, and to the ciUated 

 glumes oi' Leersia lenticulans, a property, which if instinctively 

 necessary to the support of this species ought surely to be 

 cor-mon to all the others, but cheir structure, however .similar, 

 is no: such us to pro'^uce the same effect. 



These extraneous conthigencies, like many otliers, admit no 

 more of dhect a'lpcais to Nature, than that which permitted 

 the leaves of the Aspen, ani the flowers ofthc Mnza forever to 

 tremble iu the breeze. Still in the ascidia of the Sarracenia 

 there appears to exist p.o ordinary degree, of ingenuity to ac- 

 conipiish a purpose apparently of such small irijjortance to the 

 plant itself. Tlie tube of.en vena'icose iu its form, is attenua- 

 ted downwards, and terminated above by a widening aper- 



