8 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. • 



times. Glandular hairs lead up the margin of the pitcher, and 

 through its mouth to a field of such sugar-plums as grow every- 

 where in fairyland. Flies, ants, and sometimes moths, follow the 

 baited path to feed on the sweets. But getting out is not so easy 

 as going in. Some, reaching the limit of the sugar grove, slip on 

 the glassy surface which is below it ; others, satiated with the 

 honey, try to fly away, but are dashed against the opposing lid of 

 the pitfall, fall back into the tube again, and at last they, too, 

 slip from the middle walls to be drained and more or less com- 

 pletely digested by the fluid secreted from myriads of hairs at its 

 base. 



The lure of the allied genus, Darlingtonia, is still more perfect. 

 The singular, orange-red, fleshy, two-lobed organ which hangs 

 over the pitcher's mouth much resembles the flower of the same 

 plant, so that visitors which normally pollinate that may be 

 betrayed by the double deceit. This is curiously like Stewart's 

 description of an Asiatic lizard whose body is protectively colored 

 like the sand on which it lives, but at each angle of the mouth a 

 fold is produced into a shape "exactly resembling a little red 

 flower which grows in the sand." Insects approach and are capt- 

 ured. 



The elongated, hollow leaf-tips of Nepenthes have the same 

 general purple coloration. The shade of many an insect which 

 has perished in such a drunkard's grave emphasizes the " touch- 

 not, taste-not " law — " he that is careless in his ways shall die." 



The sparkling glands of the sun-dew, pinguicula, and Venus's 

 fly-trap are scattered over the flat leaf-blades. A Poftuguese 

 genus is called by the villagers " the fly-catcher," and hung up in 

 their cottages as such. A single plant of martynia, about three 

 feet high and as many in diameter, caught seven thousand two 

 hundred small flies. The abundant hairs secrete an exceedingly 

 viscid fluid, whose unpleasant odor comes to the help of color. 

 The disagreeable smell of Arum crinitum also draws many small 

 flies to its spathes, from which escape is made difficult by the 

 sticky downward-pointing hairs of their inner surfaces. Some of 

 the visitors, unable to make their way out, die and are apparently 

 digested. Others crawl up the spadix and fly away to deposit 

 pollen on the stigmas at the base of the next spathe which they 

 enter and in which they will probably die in their turn. So, as 

 perhaps in Darlingtonia, one insect serves two important pur- 

 poses. " Thrift, thrift, Horatio ! " The priests themselves furnish 

 forth the meats of the marriage-tables. 



The prevailing colors of the attractive parts of all these plants, 

 with the single exception of the bladder- wort, are the same that 

 we shall find again in fly-pollinated flowers. The lurid red, pur- 

 ple, or pink of the pitcher-plants, sun-dew, etc., recall the blossoms 



