No. O.J HOOKER — CAUNIVORUUS HABITS OF IM. ANTS. 353 



iiround hiin, and was without cloiibt gradually overconiiog him. 

 Tho leaf being again allowed to close upon hini. ho soon died." 



At the nieetino: of this Association last year. T>r. Burdon- 

 Sanderson made a communication, which, iVom its remarkable 

 character, was well worthy of the singular history of this plant ; 

 one by no means closed yet, but in which his observations will 

 head a most interesting chapter. 



It is a generalisation — now almost a household word — that all 

 living things have a common bond of union in a substance — 

 always present where life manifests itself — which underlies all 

 their details of structure. This is caWcd prof ojila.sm. One of its 

 most distinctive properties is its aptitude to contract ; and when 

 in any given organism the particles of protoplasm are so arranged 

 that they act as it were in concert, they produce a cumulative 

 effect which is very manifest in its results. Such a manifestation 

 is found in the contraction of muscle ; and sucli a manifestation 

 we possibly have also in the contraction of the leaf of Dionaea. 



The contraction of muscle is well known to be accompanied 

 by certain electrical phenomena. When we place a fragment of 

 muscle in connection with a delicate galvanometer, we find that 

 between the outside surface and a cut surface there is a definite 

 current, due to what is called the electromotive force of the 

 muscle. Now, when the muscle is made to contract, this electro- 

 motive force momentarily disappears. The needle of the gal- 

 vanometer, deflected before, swings back towards the point of 

 rest; there is what is called a negative variation. All students 

 of the vegetable side of organised nature were astonished to hear 

 from Dr. Sanderson that certain experiments which, at the in- 

 stigation of Mr. Darwin, he had made, proved to demonstration 

 that when a leaf of Dion^ea contracts, the effects produced are 

 precisely similar to those which occur when muscle contracts. 



Not merely, then, are the phenomena of digestion in this 

 wondciful plant like those of animals, but the phenomena of con- 

 tractility agree with those of animals also, 



Drosera. — Not confined to a single district in the New World, 

 but distributed over the temperate parts of both hemispheres, in 

 sandy and marshy places, are the curious plants called Sundews 

 — the species of the genus Drosera. They are now known to be 

 near congeners of Dionsea, a fact which was little more than 

 guessed at when the curious habits which I am about to describe 

 were first discovered 

 Vol. VII. X No. 6. 



