I40 FREAKS OF PLANT LIFE. 



supports the little scape of yellow snapdragon-like 

 flowers. There are in Trinidad and other parts of 

 South America bladderworts 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 variation from the normal type of the 

 family, yet not so strange after all as that of another 

 variety in the high mountain-woods, which, finding 

 neither ponds to float in nor swamp to root in, has 

 taken to lodging as a parasite among the wet moss 

 on tree-trunks ; not so strange, cither, as that of yet 

 another, which floats, but in the most unexpected 

 spots — namely, in the water which lodges between 

 the leaf-sheaths of the wild pines perched on the tree- 

 boughs, a parasite on parasites, and sends out long 

 runners as it grows along the bough in search of the 

 next wild pine and its tiny reservoirs."^ 



Similar curious species of Utricularia were also 

 found by Dr. Gardner in Brazil. One of these cspe- 

 ciaJly deserves notice." " Like most of its congeners 

 it is aquatic ; but what is most curious is, that it is 



^ Kingsley's " At Last," p. 314. 

 * Utricularia nehimbifolia. 



