no 



secretions at tlieir apices, whicli act as fly-traps to small insects 

 which get entangled among them, mucli in the same way as our 

 common Sundews {Drosera rotimdiJ'oUa and D. longifoUa) act upon 

 the sraall insects found in our wet boggy places. The leaves of the 

 Sundews of this country are rounded, or ovate-elongate, but those of 

 the specimen exhibited were parted dichotomously into long narrow 

 spreading divisions, giving the leaves a very peculiar shape, and 

 extending the fly-catching process much more widely. The Presi- 

 dent availed himself of the occasion to call the attention of the 

 members to several other plants which by various means had the 

 property of catching flies and other small insects. The plants 

 which might be called fly-catching plants, he classed under four 

 separate heads : 1st, Such as Sundews, where the fly-catching 

 process consisted of glandular viscid hairs, as before described. 2nd, 

 Such as some species of Silene, where the flower-stem gives out a 

 viscid excretion, which holds small insects very firmly when they 

 touch it. 3rd, Such as the curious Dionea muscipula, which has at 

 the end of its leaves a remarkable appendage like an out- spread rat- 

 trap, which closes suddenly when the surface is touched by any 

 insect which might alight thereon, and keeps closed while the irrita- 

 tion of the struggling insect remains. And 4th, Such plants as 

 Apocynum Androsamifolium one of the Asclepiads, which have in 

 the centre of the flower a very remarkable arrangement of the several 

 organs, of a very irritable nature, which closes upon the proboscis of 

 flies and other insects sucking sweets, and holds them prisoners until 

 the death of the insect causes the irritation to cease. 



The President placed upon the table an orchid of the genus 

 Maxillaria, having a great number of pseudo-bulbs, arranged on 

 branclaes of the plant, which is strictly aerial, that is to say taking its 

 chief nourishment from the air. He explained the nature of these 

 pseudo-bulbs, as reservoirs of nourishment for the plants at times 

 when the aerial roots are inactive. He compared them with other 

 root-like reservoirs of nourishment, such as the common Potato, 

 Onion, Tulip, &c., and showed how they differed, but all tending to the 

 same important end, in the nourishment of the plant at certain times 

 of its existence. 



