42 Chapters m Modern Botany chap. 



violet flower raised on an upright stalk. The plump leaves, 

 to which the plant owes its quaint name Pinguicula ( = little 

 fat one), have a characteristic fungus-like smell perhaps 

 attractive, and are covered with stalked and unstalked 

 glands, which exude a copious viscid secretion. This 

 obviously catches insects, and further, Darwin tells us, 

 also digests the small flies and midges which carelessly 

 allow themselves to be limed. To the touch of other 

 things, raindrops or sand-grains for instance, the butterwort 

 is indiflferent, but a little insect provokes abundant secre- 

 tion. But this is not all ; the leaf moves, slightly capable 

 of motion as it seems. When an insect is entangled, the 

 edges of the leaf curl slowly inwards for an hour or two, not 

 fast enough indeed to catch an insect, but that is not neces- 

 sary, yet sufficiently to enclose the booty, or shift it inwards, 

 or at least expose it to the action of a greater number of 

 glands. The result is that the insect's body is soon dis- 

 solved away, only indigestible chitinous shreds being left. 



It seems that the butterwort forms the two ferments of 

 most gastric juice — a rennet-like ferment, to which the 

 plant's power of curdling milk is due ; and a digestive or 

 peptic ferment, which dissolves the usable parts of the 

 bodies of insects. It is possible that the antiseptic pro- 

 perties of these ferments justify the old custom of applying 

 the leaves of the butterwort to the sores of cattle, but we 

 should not like to commit ourselves to any such apology, 

 since the coolness and dampness of such a plaster and its 

 special power of keeping flies from the sores are evidently 

 so far sufficient. 



Professor J. R. Green describes a rennet-forming fer- 

 ment comparable to that of the calf s stomach — not only in 

 Pinguicula, but in the flowers of the yellow bedstraw 

 {Galium veriwi)^ in the stem of the Clematis, in the petals 

 of the Artichoke, and in other plants. A peptonising fer- 



