CHAPTER II 



PITCHER PLANTS — co7itinued 



Use of Pitchers, " Bionomics " — Biofiof?iics — Bionomics of Nepenthes 

 — Morphology of the Pitcher — Bladderwort — Bionornics of 

 Bladderwort — Allied Forms. 



Use of Pitchers, "Bionomics." — The view of the 

 economy of the Nepenthes pitcher held more or less strongly 

 by some older naturalists, that this was a benevolent provision 

 of nature to comfort the weary traveller or refresh the thirsty 

 bird, had of course given way ; not so much before the 

 distributional fact that these plants inhabit wet places in 

 tropical forest thickets (where even if travellers were wont 

 to pass, they with the birds would not need to seek so far 

 for water), as from the general decay of this cheaply 

 optimistic teleology. Yet so habitual was this way of look- 

 ing at things that we have even had in more modern times 

 the pitchers of Sarracenia and Darlingtonia described as 

 caves of refuge supplied by a benevolent Providence to 

 conceal insects from their pursuers. 



Some better explanation was needed, and the new one, 

 in terms of that grim and all - pervading struggle for 

 existence, which naturalists were learning from Darwin 

 and the times to substitute along the whole line for the 

 old-fashioned "harmony of nature," could not but at once 

 arrest attention and quickly win its way to acceptance and 



