THE AQUARIUM. OCTOBER, 1893. 



CARNIVOROUS PLANTS. 



(Continued from last number.) 



Still more wonderful were the commu- 

 nications made to the Paris Academy, 

 in the beginning of 1872, by the botanist 

 Ziegler. He claimed that all dead albu- 

 men only then caused the leaves to be 

 irritated, after holding it between the 

 fingers for a short time, but if he would 

 place it on the leaves by means of for- 

 ceps, he claimed it jiroduced no motion 

 in the leaf. He claimed still further that 

 by fastening, at a. small distance from 

 the leaf, a bit of albumen obtained from 

 blood and held in the hand for half an 

 hour, the leaf lost all irritability for the 

 albumen in twenty-four hours. Con- 

 trarv to this the leaves were now sus 

 ceptible to Quinia wrapped in tissue 

 paper. May this be as it will, one can- 

 not think of any other explanation than 

 that of nerve irritability, which is 

 transmitted and calls the muscular ap- 

 paratus into activity. Darwin destroy- 

 ed the activity of these leaves by means 

 of pricking them with needles, and 

 Heckel, of Montpellier, like other 

 botanists before him, has shown that 

 the vapors of ether and chloroform 

 obtunded the sensibility of these plants 

 in the same manner as in the smaller 

 and larger animals. Naturally we can- 

 not claim a nervous centre like in higher 

 animals, but must be content by at- 

 tributing the actions to reflex nervous' 

 actions, like that of a beheaded frog, 

 who will withdraw his leg on being 

 irritated. The botanist, Nuttall, 

 noticed the same motions in newly 

 plucked leaves, the same as in those 

 remaining on the plant, but to a less 

 degree, and the excitabilit}' soon subsid- 

 ing. Bennett states as a settled fact 

 that the exudation is augmented as soon 

 as an insect is caught, similar to the 



gastric secretion in the stomachs of 

 animals as soon as food is introduced. 

 Meat is altered in appearance in a short 

 time by this fluid. The fluid of the 

 Droficra was known in olden times, and 

 to the bruised j^lant, mixed with salt, 

 were attributed the properties of draw- 

 ing blisters. The leaves were always 

 likened to the stomach of an animal on 

 account of the power of digestion, but 

 it was not thought that they were 

 possessed of glands of digestion and 

 absorbents to take up the digested 

 material like the stomachs of animals. 

 Attention was now drawn to a species 

 of plants, the leaves of which always 

 contained a fluid in their hollow interior, 

 the so-called Pitcher pla)i/s. To these 

 wonderful swamp plants, belonging to 

 the sj)ecies Neinntlies, Sarracenia and 

 Dardngtonia (see illustration in last 

 number), many jioetical allusions were 

 made, in that they jireserved to the 

 wanderer through the swamps a fresh 

 and invigorating drink, and Darwin 

 noted that the fluid of the Sarracenia 

 refreshed thirsty birds. One truly 

 finds that the fluid iu the artistically 

 formed pitcher (the contents of which 

 are protected from evaporation and 

 rain by a lid) is full of dead insects, 

 which may be an inducement for insect 

 eating birds to avail themselves of these 

 opportunities. The brilliant colors and 

 the honey-like exudation at the entrance 

 of these pitchers (those of the California 

 species resembling an open reptile's 

 mouth) coax the insects to enter, where 

 they drown in large numbers, Wm. 

 Batrani, in 1791, assumed that the 

 fluid contained in the j^itcher-shaped 

 leaves of one (North American ladies' 

 saddle flower) to possess properties of 

 digestion, and in 1829 Bennett confirmed 

 these assumptions,while Dr. Mellichamp, 

 of S'^uth Carolina, proved it to be so 



