CHAPIER 2% 
INSECTIVOROUS PLANTS 
HAvinG thus rapidly glanced at our flowering plants in 
their botanical order, I want you now, as I warned you 
in Chapter I., to glance at three groups which we must 
pick out, not by their botanical relationships, but by some 
other peculiarity which they share in common. These 
groups are the flesh-eating plants, the parasitic plants, 
and the forest trees. 
I cannot promise you here any marvels about dog-eating 
orchids, or plants that might devour men and boys. For 
information as to these, you must consult the instructive 
fiction of monthly magazines. Our plants in this chapter. 
hunt humbler game, and are not even so ambitious as 
West Indian spiders, which are said to capture the tiny 
Humming Birds. Nevertheless, though on a small scale, 
the delicacy of their working is well worth the few pages 
I can spare them here. 
There are two degrees of activity in insect-catching. 
In plants of the first class traps are constructed, but the 
plant does not move in any way to assist them. In the 
second, the plant actually makes more or less vigorous 
movement to ensure its successful capture of the unfor- 
tunate insect, or minute animal, that has been unlucky 
enough to be tempted to it. One word as to the object 
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