PLANTS WITH TRAPS AND PITFALLS TO ENSNARE ANIMALS. 



137 



some time after the creatui-es have entered the chambers the only remains of them 

 that one meets with are claws, legs, bristles, and little amorphous lumps, their 

 sarcode, flesh, and blood having vanished and left no trace, we must suppose that 

 the absorption of nutriment from the dead prey here ensues through contact with 

 the extended protoplasmic tentacular filaments as in the case of Rhizopoda, to 



Fig. 25. — Capturing apparatus in the Toothwort, Bartsia, and Butterwort. 



* Piece of an underground leaf-shoot of the Toothwort. 2 Longitudinal section through the same; x2, s Longitudinal section 

 through a leaf; xGO. * Piece of the wall of a cavity; x20O. 5 Plasmic threads radiating from the cells of the little heads; 

 x540. ß Subterranean bud of Bartnia; natural size. 7 Cross-section through part of this bud; xOO. 8 The margin of 

 a bud-scale in section; x200. ö piece of the epidermis of a leaf of Butterwort; xlSO. »o Transverse section through the 

 leaf of a Butterwort {,Pmguicula alpina); x50. ii Transverse section thi'ough Butterwort leaf; natural size. 



which these organs are so strikingly similar. It is not impossible that the sessile 

 organs alone have the function of absorption, and that the stalked capitate 

 structures serve for the retention of the prey; at least, this idea is supported by the 

 circumstance that the former, which, as already stated, are much the scarcer, have 

 vessels running to them connected by a peculiar barrel-shaped cell with the large 

 elliptical tabular cells, and this is not the case with the capitate forms of 

 structure. 



The openings of the chambers into the recess at the back of a Toothwort leaf 

 being very narrow, only minute animals, such as Infusoria, Amoebie, Rhizopoda, 



