242 ABSORPTION-CELLS ON LEAVES. 
infrequently killed accidentally in the water filling the larger kinds of basins 
formed as parts of foliage-leaves, that pollen, spores, and particles of earth also are 
blown by the wind into these basins, and that, after the ensuing solution and 
decomposition of the organic and mineral bodies in question, the water exhibits a 
brownish colour and contains organic compounds as well as food-salts in solution. 
It is not necessary to repeat that these compounds are able to pass into the interior 
of the plant with the water through the action of the absorption-cells which are 
never absent from the bottom of the basins; but it seems proper to consider 
specially in this connection the most conspicuous cases of the phenomenon which 
have been observed. The greatest quantity of matter, dissolved and undissolved, is 
found in the flat, saucer-shaped laminz of Saxifraga peltata, which grows on the 
sites of springs in the Sierra Nevada of North America. The water in these saucers 
is sometimes coloured quite a dark brown by the presence of decayed beetles, wasps, 
centipedes, fallen leaves, and animal excreta; and when it evaporates a regular crust 
is left behind at the bottom of the reservoir. Three days after rain I still found in 
the inflated vagina of Heraclewm palmatum, a species of cow-parsnip, a pool of 
brown water 2 cm. deep, and at the bottom a deposit of blackish, oily mud in which 
the remains of decayed earwigs, beetles, and spiders, were still recognizable. The 
same thing is observed in the cisterns of Bromeliacee and in the water-basins of 
Dipsacus laciniatus and Silphiwm perfoliatwm (fig. 56), and it is interesting to 
find there are cells also at the bottom of the basins of the Dipsacus in question from 
which protoplasmic threads radiate forth, as in the case of the chambers of the 
Toothwort, and that numberless putrefactive bacteria always make their appearance 
in the water in these basins. The quantity of organic residue is less considerable 
in the saucer-shaped leaves of pelargoniums, but, on the other hand, earthy particles 
are frequently met with in them to such an extent that, when the water has 
evaporated, the concave surface of the leaf is covered with an ashen-gray layer 
of earth. 
Observations of this nature establish the conviction that no sharp line of 
demarcation exists in respect of the absorption of water either between carnivorous 
plants and land plants, or between land plants and saprophytes, or between 
saprophytes and carnivorous plants; and they lead further to the conclusion that 
water, mineral food-salts, and organie compounds are susceptible of being taken up 
not only by subterranean but also by aérial absorptive apparatus 
