CHAPTER I 



PITCHER PLANTS 



Darlingtonia — Sa^'racem'a — Origin of Darlingtonia Pitchers — /«- 

 sect-Catching — Other Relations to Insects — Minute Sti-ucture of 

 these Pitchers — Atistralian Pitcher Plant (^Cephalotus) — The 

 Pitcher Plant proper {Nepenthes^ — Secreting Glatids as 

 Nectaries. 



In attempting to arrange a suitable introduction to the 

 study of botany, a teacher may incline to one or other of 

 two distinct methods. The first, and in many ways the 

 more satisfactory, is to take the commonest plants around 

 one, begin with the simplest knowledge of these, extend it 

 by what is easily to be observed or obtained, deepen this 

 by closer study, and next extend to less familiar forms the 

 growing experience and practical power of the student. 

 Most courses of biological instruction now actually run 

 upon this principle : they place before the student some 

 common type, some frog or crayfish, some common fern 

 and flower, from which he may work his way towards a 

 wider survey of the science. The other method, which also 

 has its favourable side, is to start with something rare or 

 strange — at any rate unfamiliar, — and so not only evade 

 the prejudice that botany deals mainly in hard names 



