MINOR CARNIVORA. 129 



the late Andrew Murray, who has given evidence 

 so much the more valuable from his scepticism on 

 the habits of Pinguicula. " I have been staying," he 

 writes, " in Kinross-shire, where I had an abundance 

 of material to observe, and a fair proportion of both 

 dry and wet weather, so as to see the behaviour of 

 the plant under both conditions. The first thing of 

 which I convinced myself was that, whether it was 

 carnivorous or not, Pinguicula was rightly regarded 

 by Mr. Darwin as coming under the same category 

 as Dionoea and Drosera : it was a fly-catcher and a 

 fly-dissolver — whether it was a fly-digester is a differ- 

 ent thing ; but neither on that point any more than 

 on the other can it be separated from them. If the 

 one digests the other will no doubt do so likewise. 

 If the one does not neither will the other."^ Thus 

 far, then, there is the decided opinion of a very careful 

 observer, that the phenomena exhibited by the 

 Pinguicula are in entire harmony with those of the 

 fly-traps, and that the conclusions arrived at with 

 regard to the latter will also be applicable to the 

 former. " When the insect alights, or is blown on to 

 the leaf," he says, " it gets entangled in the sticky 

 secretion, and it is killed, and speedily killed (long 

 before the curving of the margin of the leaf could 



^ Murray in " Gardener's Chronicle," September 19, 1874, 

 P- 354- 



K 



