358 THE CANADIAN NAXllRALlst. fVol. Vll. 



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ljinr];\Mis seems to have supposed that Sariacenia was originally 

 uCjUutic ill its habits, that it had Nymphpea-like leaves, and that 

 when it took to a terrestrial life its leaves became hollowed out, 

 to contain the water in which they could no longer float — in 

 fact, he showed himself to be an evolutionist of the true Dar- 

 winian type. 



Catesby's suggestion was a very infelicitous one. The insects 

 which visit these plants may find in them a retreat, but it is one 

 from which they never return. Linnaeus' correspondent Collin- 

 sou, remarked in one of his letters, that "many poor insects lose 

 their lives by being drowned in these cisterns of water;" but 

 William Bartram, the son of the botanist, seems to have been 

 the first to put on record, at the end of the last century, the fact 

 that Sarracenias catch insects and put them to death in the 

 wholesale way that they do. 



Before stopping to consider how this is actually achieved, I 

 will carry the history a little further. 



In the two species in which tlie mouth is unprotected by the 

 lid it could not be doubted that a part, at any rate, of the con- 

 tained fluid was supplied by rain. But in Sarracenia variolaris, 

 in which the lid closes over the mouth, so that rain cannot 

 readily enter it, there is no doubt that a fluid is secreted at the 

 bottom of the pitchers, which probably has a digestive function. 

 William Bartram, in the preface to his travels in 1791, described 

 this fluid, but he was mistaken in supposing i^nt it acted as a 

 hire. There is a sugary secretion which attracts insects, but 

 this is only found at the upper part of the tube. Bartram must 

 be credited with the suggestion, which he, however, only put 

 forward doubtfully, that the insects were dissolved in the fluid, 

 and then became available for the alimentation of the plants. 



Sir J. E. Smith, who published a figure and description of 

 Sfirraccnia variolaris, noticed that it secreted fluid, but was 

 content to suppose that it was merely the gaseous products of 

 the decomposition of insects that subserved the processes of 

 vegetation. In 1829, however, thirtj years after Bartram's 

 book, Burnett wrote a paper containing a good many original 

 ideas expressed in a somewhat quaint fashion, in which he very 

 strongly insisted on the existence of a true digestive process in 

 the case of Sarracenia, analogous to that which takes place in 

 the stomach of an animal. 



Our knowledge of the habits of Sarracenia variolaris is now 



