Ill Other Insectivorous Plants 55 



sects ; that they express some more direct physiological 

 pecuHarity of the plant, and that the insect-catching is 

 after all a minor function ? Let us return to the pitcher 

 plants. 



Further Difficulties and Criticisms. — How far then are 

 we to regard the pitchers with Hooker, Darwin, and so many 

 others, as primarily insectivorous in function, and to account 

 for them as marvels of the perfecting action of natural 

 selection in progressive adaptation to that strange use ? 

 Scepticism and even controversy were rife enough fifteen 

 years ago, but gradually these diminished and disappeared, 

 and most botanists (with whom we may apparently reckon 

 the very latest author. Professor Goebel, although it is to 

 be regretted that the physiological part of his treatise has 

 still to appear) undoubtedly accept this alike as an estab- 

 Hshed doctrine of vegetable physiology and an admirable 

 special case for the Darwinian theory, explaining every 

 detail of elaborate structure and attractive colour in terms 

 of that view. To this persuasion also the writer was wont 

 fully to belong ; witness the undoubting orthodoxy of his 

 article on " Insectivorous Plants " in the Ejicyclopadia 

 Britannica (vol. xiii. 1879). Yet, as better acquaintance with 

 the large Edinburgh collection went on year by year, his 

 faith, it must be confessed, gradually — at first almost in- 

 sensibly — diminished. Experiments on digestion did not 

 come off so well as Dr. Hooker, still less as Rees and Will, 

 would have it ; but this one at first put away as temptations 

 to unbelief — indeed, was ashamed to speak of, for were they 

 not more hkely due to some defect in experiment or experi- 

 mentalist, or if not, to some unlucky dyspepsia of these 

 particular pitchers ? The old criticisms of the doctrine, too, 

 were often so unphysiological and in evolution so reactionary, 

 it seemed incredible that they could be of any value ! 



Timid comparison of notes with Mr. Lindsay, the curator 



