'' TURNING THE TABLES.'' 281 



dense that the outline of the animal was lost to 

 view. Nothing yet in the history of carnivorous 

 plants came so near the animal as this. I was forced 

 to the conclusion that these little bladders are in 

 truth like so many stomachs digesting and assimi- 

 lating animal food." 



Charles Kingsley's observant eye did not fail to 

 notice the peculiarity of the West Indian kinds of 

 Bladderworts : "The type of the rushes and grasses was 

 very English ; but among them grew, here and there, 

 plants which excited my astonishment ; above all, 

 certain Bladderworts, which I had expected to find, 

 but which, when found, were so utterly unlike any 

 English ones, that I did not recognise at first what 

 they were. Our English Bladderworts, as everybody 

 knows, float in stagnant water on tangles of hair- 

 like leaves, something like those of the Water-Ranun- 

 culus, but furnished with innumerable tiny bladders ; 

 and this raft " (Kingsley held the theory that the 

 " bladders " were buoys) " supports the little scape 

 of yellow snapdragon -like flowers. There are in 

 Trinidad and other parts of South America Bladder- 

 worts of this type. But those which we found 

 to-day, growing out of the damp clay, were more 

 like in habit to a delicate stalk of flax, or even a 

 bent of grass, upright, leafless, or all but leafless, 

 with heads of small blue or yellow flowers, and 

 carrying, in one species, a few very minute bladders 

 about the roots ; in another none at all. A strange 



