HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 195 



pointed bristles, and contains only glands arranged in rows. 

 Small worms, mites and other articulates, which enter the mouth, 

 can easily penetrate to the base of the bag, but can not return on 

 account of this army of lances pointing towards them. They are 

 prisoners, die, and the remains of their disintegration are ab- 

 sorbed by the glands inside the bag. 



As types for a second series of plants organized in this manner 

 we may mention a plant from British Guiana, the Heliamphora 

 nutans and our common Trumpet plant, the Sarracenia purpurea 

 (Fig. 4), which is found in swamps from Hudson's Bay to Florida. 

 In both the leaves, transformed into bags, are arranged like a 

 rosette or star, and their bases rest upon the moist soil; from 

 there they bend upwards, are inflated near the middle, contract 

 again near the opening, and end in a rather small leaf. This 

 leaf is striped with red lines, has the form of a shell, and presents 

 its concave side towards the falling rain. In the Sarracenia this 

 arrangement serves the purpose of collecting and conducting the 

 rain into the bags, which are more or less filled with water, and 

 from where it can not readily evaporate. The spike-like bristles 

 which clothe the inside of the bag of Heliamphora are arranged 

 like the scales upon the back of a pike [Fig. 3 (2)]; they point 

 downwards and grow longer and more pointed towards the base 

 of the bag. The shell-shaped leaf in Heliamphora above the 

 opening bears glandular hairs, which secrete honey, so that the 

 lips of the mouth are covered with a thin film of this attractive 

 material. IsTumerous small insects are thus attracted, both 

 winged and unwinged ones; the latter utilize a peculiar projec- 

 tion upon the concave side of the bag to reach the honey. If 

 they enter they are lost, as they can not crawl over the slippery 

 scales, armed with spikes, and eventually perish in the water 

 collected below. The remains of their decaying bodies are ab- 

 sorbed by cells in the inner walls. The number of corpses is 

 frequently so great that the plants can be discovered by the un- 

 pleasant odor arising from them. Some birds, gaining knowl- 

 edge from experience, frequent such plants to pick dead insects 

 from the bags. 



Whether the fluid contained in these traps is simply water, or 

 whether the gland-like cells occurring, for instance, in the leaf 

 of the Trumpet plant, secrete other fluids, is doubtful. A centi- 

 pede, about four centimetres long, which had during the night 

 entered the^trumpet of a Sarracenia purpurea, would indicate the 

 presence of another fluid than water. One half of the centipede 



