38 ON SOME RESEMBLANOES BETWEEN PLANTS AMD ANIMALS. 
parents. Ofcourse the injury they do is in some cases very serious, 
as they generally destroy the plants that have sustained them. 
The mystic Mistletoe (whose branches are in such demand for 
Christmas decorations, that we in the north, where the plant is 
very rare indeed, import train loads from Herefordshire and 
Worcestershire, where it is plentiful in every orchard) is the most 
familiar example of a parasitic plant. Probably all whom I am 
addressing will also know the Dodder—that causes such mischief 
amongst clover and fields of flax—and perhaps the Broom-rape 
also, a sickly-looking, leafless plant that preys upon the roots of 
clover. 
A third class of plants that resemble animals in their habits are 
the scavengers. The greater part of the funguses act in this 
capacity, growing wherever decaying vegetable matter is present, 
and converting it into ‘‘ humus” or soil, preventing unwholesome 
and unpleasant exhalations which would otherwise be given off 
from this decaying matter. They quite take the place in the 
vegetable kingdom of many animals, whose sole business in life is 
to clear away decaying and putrescent animal matter. I will 
now finish my illustrations with a few examples of plants that 
bear a very strange resemblance to certain animals. The animals 
I mean are those which we call carnivorous, because they live 
exclusively, or nearly so, on the flesh of others. And we actually 
find carnivorous plants—plants which, though they do not ex- 
clusively live on flesh, still seem to require a certain amount of 
animal food, and in order to obtain it, have very curious contri- 
vances furnished them by Nature. 
Of this strange carnivorous class is the Sundew, that grows on 
every peat bog; one of the prettiest of our wild plants, sending 
up a spike of delicate white flowers from a rosette of pink leaves, 
every one of which sparkles with tiny diamonds. The diamonds 
are the bait that it sets to catch unwary insects. They are little 
drops of a very sticky fluid that exudes from pink hairs upon the 
leaves, and that seems to be very attractive to flies, which alight 
on the leaves and are held prisoners in the gummy liquid and 
remain there till they die and decay. 
