• ((•"I 



No. ().] llOOKEtl — CAitXlVOROl'^s ilABlTS OF PLANTS. obo 



insects only. Before arriving at a state of maturity the plant 

 bear? much larger, subcrect pitchers, also twisted, ^Yith the lip 

 produced into a large inflated hood, that completely arches over 

 a very small entrance to the cavity of the pitchers. A singular 

 orange-red, flabby, twodobed organ hangs from the end of the 

 hood, right in front of the entrance, which, as I was informed 

 last week by letter from Prof. Asa Gray, is smeared with honey 

 on its inner surface. These pitchers are crammed with large 

 insects, especially moths, which decompose in them, and resull 

 in a putrid mass. I have no information of water being found 

 in its pitchers in its native country, but have myself found a 

 slight acid secretion in the young states of both forms of pitcher. 



The tissues of the inner surfaces of the pitchers of both the 

 young and the old plant I find to be very similar to those of 

 Snrracenia variolaris smdjlava. 



Looking at a flowering specimen of Darlington ia, I was struck 

 with a remarkable analogy between the arrangement and colour- 

 ing of the parts of the leaf and of the flower. The petals are 

 of the same colour as the flap of the pitcher, and between each 

 pair of petals is a hole (formed by a notch in the opposed mar- 

 gins of each) leading to the stamens and stigma. Turning to 

 the pitcher, the relation of its flap to its entrance is somewhat 

 similar. Now, we know that coloured petals are specially attrac- 

 tive organs, and that the object of their colour is to bring insects 

 to feed on the pollen or nectar, and in this case by means of the 

 hole to fertilise the flower; and that the object of the flap and its 

 sugar is also to attract insects, but with a very difl'erent result, 

 cannot be doubted. It is hence conceivable that this marvellous 

 plant lures insects to its flowers for one object, and feeds them 

 while it uses them to fertilise itself, and that, this accomplished, 

 some of its benefactors are thereafter lured to its pitchers for the 

 sake of feeding itself! 



But to return from mere conjecture to scientific earnest, I can- 

 not dismiss Darlingtonia without pointing out to you what 

 appears to me a most curious point in its history ; which is, that 

 the change from the slender, tubular, open-mouthed to the inflated 

 closed-mouthed pitchers, is, in all the specimens which I have 

 examined, absolutely sudden in the individual plant. I find no 

 pitchers in an intermediate stage of development. This, a matter 

 of no little sisrnificance in itself, derives additional interest from 

 the fact that the young pitchers to a certain degree represent 



