2 Trails ciions of the Roi/al Microscopical Society. 



against the possibility of absorption by the leaves. In the case of 

 Dionsea, Darwin gives a very brief description of minute glands of a 

 reddish-purple colour which cover the upper side of the leaf, and 

 which he states to have the power of absorption. But in order to 

 find an adequate description of these bodies we must go back nearly 

 thirty years, when Dr. Lindley gave accurate descriptions and 

 figures of them in his 'Ladies' Botany,' published in 1834, and, in 

 the following words, showed a wonderful insight into their probable 

 function : — " From the cuticle of the upper surface of the leaf of 

 Dionsea there spring at short intervals little red glands, which grow 

 from minute green oval spaces, composed of two parallel green cells 

 and resembling stomates. They are firm fleshy bodies resembling 

 little convex buttons, and are composed of cells arranged in a circu- 

 lar manner round an axis consisting of two such cells stationed one 

 on the top of the other. I presume that these glands are analogous 

 to the curious hairs of Sundew, although we do not see that they 

 are possessed of any ii-ritability ; but in the Sundew they arise from 

 a general expansion of the cuticle and not from spurious stomates. 

 We moreover find upon the surface a prodigious number of red 

 glands, so minute as to be individually invisible to the naked eye, 

 and giving a red tinge to the leaf. Such glands are found nowhere 

 except upon the upper surface of the leaf in the neighbourhood of 

 the delicate seat of irritability. It is not improbable that these 

 glands are either in some way connected with the irritability, 

 although it is not they through which the shock is first communi- 

 cated to the leaf, or, as Mr. Curtis supposes, are intended to absorb 

 the nutriment afforded to the leaf by the decay of the insects en- 

 trapped in it." Similar bodies are also known to exist in Nepenthes ; 

 and were likewise described by Dr. Lindley, in his ' Introduction to 

 Botany,' edition 1848, as stomates of a peculiar construction in 

 contact with an internal deep brownish-red gland. 



My own observations have been entirely confined to the two 

 most readily obtainable of our English carnivorous plants, Drosera 

 rotundifolia and Finguicula vulgaris ; having paid considerable 

 attention to the structure of the leaves in these two species during 

 my summer holidays for the last three years. In the summer of 

 1873, while staying in Westmoreland, I first observed and drew 

 certain bodies imbedded in the leaf of Drosera which it struck me 

 must be connected with the processes of absorption and digestion, 

 although I could find no record of them by any previous observer. 

 Hearing shortly afterwards that Mr. Darwin was likely soon to 

 bring before the public his store of long-accumulating investigations 

 on these plauts, I refrained from publishing my observations. When, 

 however, Darwin's 'Insectivorous Plants' came out, in the spring 

 of 1875, I found no record of the existence of these bodies, notwith- 

 standing the otherwise full and accurate description of the structure 



