3G4 THE CANADIAN^ NATURALIST. [Vol. \U. 



those of the SariMceuias with open mouths and erect lids; aud 

 the old pitchers those of the Sarracenias with closed mouths and 

 globose lids. The combinatiou of representative characters in an 

 outlying species of a small order cannot but be regarded as a 

 marvellously significant fact in the view of those mbrphologists 

 who hold the doctrine of evolution. 



Xepenfhes. — The genus Nepenthes consists of upwards of 

 thirty species of climbing, half shrubby plants, natives of the 

 hotter parts of the Asiatic Archipelago from Borneo to Ceylon, 

 with a few outlying species in New Caledonia, in Tropical Aus- 

 tralia, and in the Seychelle Islands on the African coast. Its 

 pitchers are abundantly produced, especially during the younger 

 state of the plants. Thej^ present very considerable modifica- 

 tious of form and external structure, and vary greatly in size, 

 from little more than an inch to almost a foot in length ; one 

 species, indeed, which I have herefrom the mountains of Borneo, 

 has pitchers which, including the lid, measure a foot and a half, 

 and its capacious bo^l is large enough to drow^n a small animal 

 or bird. 



The structure of the pitcher of Nepenthes is less complicated 

 on the whole than that of Sarracenia, though some of its tissues 

 are much more highly specialised. The pitcher itself is here not 

 a transformed leaf, as in Sarracenia, nor is it a transformed leaf- 

 blade, like that of Dion^a, but an appendage of the leaf deve- 

 loped at its tip, and answers to a water-secreting gland that may 

 be seen terminating the mid-rib of the leaf of certain plants. It 

 is furnished with a stalk, often a very long one, which in the case 

 of pitchers formed on leaves high up the stem has (before the 

 full development of the pitcher) the power of twisting like a 

 tendril round neighbouring objects, and thus aiding the plant in 

 climbing, often to a great height in the forest. 



In most species the pitchers are of two forms, one appertain- 

 ing to the young, the other to the old state of the plant, the 

 transition from one form to the other being gradual. Those of 

 the young state are shorter and more inflated ; they have broad 

 fringed longitudinal wrings on the outside, which are probably 

 guides to lead insects to the mouth; the lid is smaller and more 

 open, and the whole interior surface is covered with secreting 

 glands. Being formed near the root of the plant, these pitchers 

 often lest on the ground, and in species which do not form leaves 

 near the root they are soiiK^times suspended from stalks which 



