PLANTS WITH TRAPS AND PITFALLS TO ENSNARE ANIMALS. 119 
Splachnacex. But on closer examination there is convincing evidence that this 
moss also lives only on animal dung undergoing putrefaction. For remains of 
broken mouse and bird bones are invariably to be discovered in the substratum, 
and there can be no doubt that the Tayloria chooses for its site boughs of old 
trees upon which birds of prey have dropped their excrements. Of the mosses 
living on the bark itself, one instance is also worth mentioning. Whereas in the 
case of most species of the genus Dicranwm, the mouldering residues of conifers 
constitute the favourite substratum; there is one species, viz. Dicranwm Sauteri, 
which is found only on the bark of the beech. The weather-worn bark of this 
tree is seen, in sub-alpine districts, covered with the most brilliant emerald-green 
films of the above-named moss; whilst on adjacent pines and fir-trees no trace of it 
can be found. 
PLANTS WITH TRAPS AND PITFALLS TO ENSNARE ANIMALS. 
A number of plants exhibit contrivances which obviously have for their object 
the capture and retention of such small creatures as may fly or creep on to their 
leaves; and it has been ascertained by searching experiments that the majority of 
these plants use the animals they capture, in one way or another, as sources of 
nutriment. For the most part the animals that are caught are insects, and hence 
the term “insectivorous plants” has been applied to the class in question. The 
flesh of the insect being the part of it principally serviceable for food, the name 
“carnivorous” or “flesh-eating”, or better, perhaps, “flesh-consuming” plants has 
also been used; and seeing that the most important part of the whole process is 
really the digestion, or taking in of organic compounds from the captured animals 
after they are dead, we might call those plants which are furnished with organs 
for the absorption of the dissolved flesh of animals ensnared by them, “ flesh-digest- 
ing” plants as well. As will appear from the following discussion of the subject, 
no one of these names completely covers the wonderful phenomena in question, 
and it is scarcely possible to find a short and not too cumbrous expression which 
shall henceforward exclude all misconceptions. 
In round numbers we may estimate the plants which capture animals and 
demolish them for food at five hundred. Within this comparatively small range, 
however, the variety of the mechanism for seizure and absorption of nutritive 
matter is so great that in order to give a general picture of them it is necessary to 
classify them into several sections and groups. In the first section we have a series 
of plant-forms wherein chambers are developed, which admit of the entrance of 
small animals, but not of their escape. The organs of capture and digestion of the 
plants belonging to this section exhibit no external movements of any kind, and 
are thereby differentiated from the forms belonging to the second section, which 
perform definite movements, in response to a stimulus caused by the contact of the 
animals, with the object of covering the prey with as great a quantity of digestive 
fluid as possible. Lastly, there is a third section wherein the individual forms are 
