SUNDEW TRIBE 93 



middle of this lies the bait for the unhappy insect that becomes its prey. 

 Many minute red glands cover its surface, which perhaps tempt the poor 

 animals to taste, and the instant these tender parts are irritated by its feet, 

 the two lobes of the leaf rise up, grasp it fast, lock the rows of spines 

 together, and squeeze it to death." He adds that, lest the strong efibrts for 

 life in the creature just taken should serve to disengage it, three small erect 

 spines are fixed near the middle of each lobe, among the glands, that effectu- 

 ally put an end to all its struggles ; nor do the lobes ever open again while 

 the dead animal continues there. Apparently the first hint of the use of the 

 insect to the plant was thus given by Ellis, whose observations on zoophytes 

 and other natural objects were so valuable an addition to science. Yet even 

 he little thought that on the peaty bogs of his native land lay thousands of 

 vegetable insect traps, with a somewhat similar mechanism, and which were 

 daily nourished by crowds of creeping or flying animals. 



Those wonderful flowers, the different species of Sarracenia, often seen 

 in our hot-houses, brought hither from America, and termed side-saddle 

 flowers, from the shape of the sepals, are now known to be carnivorous plants, 

 devouring their insect prey by myriads. Just within the rim of their pitchers 

 lies a sweet viscid fluid, which attracts not only the tiny insects that come to 

 sip the nectar, but large living creatures, as bees and spiders. At the smooth 

 base -of this pitcher there lies a limpid fluid, possessing digestive properties. 

 The descent into this gulf is rapid and easy, for the inner surface on the upper 

 part to the middle of the funnel is covered with a soft velvety hairiness quite 

 smooth to the touch. But from the middle of the tube its inner surface is 

 clothed with bristles turning downwards, which gradually become larger till 

 near its base, when again all is smooth, rendering the upward path a hard, 

 thorny, and inaccessible one to the insects whose gliding downwards was so 

 easy and pleasant. 



The beautiful flowers, too, of the Virginian swallow- wort (Asclepias syriacm) 

 are consummate insect-destroyers. Dr. Barton says that it is scarcely possible 

 to find a blossom which has not entrapped its victims. Like the flowers just 

 described, the way upwards, when once the descent is made, becomes hard, 

 rough, and impossible to any but the largest and strongest insect, which has 

 glided into them but to die there. In the State of Virginia whole acres of 

 ground are sometimes covered with these flowers, and the whole surrounding- 

 atmosphere of such places is rendered disgusting by the putrescence of the 

 decomposing matter within these blossoms. As we think of the innumerable 

 swarms of insects which perish thus, we can only infer that this fatal power 

 given to plants over the insect race is in accordance with that law of Nature 

 by which in air, on land, or in the sea, one kind of created thing preys on 

 another, keeping the numbers of all in due bounds, and providing for that 

 infinite variety which gives to earth one of its gi-eatest charms. 



2. Spathulate-leaved Sundew {D. intermedia). — Leaves all from the 

 root, erect, oblong, broad at the upper part, and tapering towards the base ; 

 leaf-stalks smooth ; seeds with a rough, not chafiy coat. Plant perennial. 

 This Sundew sometimes grows in the bogs with the round-leaved species, but 

 it is less frequent, and is altogether a smaller plant. It is more abundant in 

 the south than in the north of England, and, like the other species, its leaves 



