SUNDEW TRIBE 91 



adhered ; and no doubt many more would have been caught afterwards, by 

 these same leaves, and still more by those yet unexpanded." Yet the heavy 

 drops of rain, the nodding flower, or the sweeping grass-blade, never cause 

 these clutching movements. Well for the plant that it is so, for were it 

 otherwise, the Sundew would die before its time, of its useless activity ; for 

 the leaves become inert after repeated exertions. 



It is due to the skilful experiments of Darwin — experiments made with 

 the insight of genius, and a perseverance which can but command our wonder 

 and admiration — that after years of discussions and surmises we have come 

 to understand the habits of the Sundew ; for these experiments of his have 

 resulted in positive proofs, and not in uncertain theories or suggestions 

 towards truth, and have opened a new world of wonder for us all. He has 

 termed these and other plants possessing like peculiarities carnivorous plants, 

 and has shown that these leaves are destined to catch the prey on which they 

 must feed. For the last fifty years some botanists have suggested that this 

 might be the case, and more than one has placed small fibres of meat on these 

 leaves, and expressed a conviction of what is now known to be the fact, that 

 the plants throve all the better for their animal food. Yet these experimenters 

 met a few years since with ridicule as a reward for their pains ; and one 

 learned botanist asserted that to suppose that the leaves of these plants 

 " could absorb and dissolve animal substances was too evidently in disagi'ee- 

 ment with our knowledge of the whole course of vegetable nutrition to 

 deserve to be seriously discussed." 



But Mr. Darwin, after investigations pursued for fifteen years, has set at 

 rest all the speculations and reasonings on the subject, and has pointed out 

 beyond all question that it is substances alone which contain nitrogen that 

 furnish the food of these plants, which indeed get little nourishment from the 

 small roots growing in a soil from which little is to be derived. Their viscid 

 secretion is a baited trap for the unwary, and this substance will dissolve 

 completely pieces of the white of egg, tiny shreds of meat, cheese, drops of 

 milk, and such parts of insects as the plant can digest, leaving the undigested 

 portion to be cleared away by the winds. This secretion acts on them in 

 exactly the same way as the gastric juice of mammals, and the digested 

 matter is afterwards absorbed, the whole process differing from that oi 

 animals in this only : that the operation goes on in the plant before our eyes, 

 while that of the animal is carried on out of sight. But these leaves are 

 neither to be trifled with nor deceived. Overfeeding is as fatal to them as 

 even to human beings ; for when Mr. Darwin gave them too much cheese or 

 too large a fibre of meat, they rapidly bent their tentacles inwards, and, as if 

 in greediness, secreted their acid copiously, but after a while actually died 

 of surfeit. 



Eaw meat and a decoction made from the leaves of young cabbages 

 seem to be the substances which act most energetically on these leaves, their 

 hairs bending inwards over them with great rapidity. But the Sundews 

 reject those objects which contain no nitrogen. Many insoluble and inorganic 

 substances, as scraps of glass, bits of quill, gun-cotton, which the gastric juice 

 of the animal cannot digest, were at first closed in upon by the hairs, but not 

 held in by them, and failed to excite any increased flow of acid. " That a 



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