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While plants have no stomachs as animals have, 

 they nevertheless have organs of nutrition^ through 

 which they take up their food in a soluble form. The 

 process is similar in both animal and vegetable life ; 

 in the first, the food in the solid state is taken into 

 the stomach, to be there rendered soluble before being 

 absorbed into the system ; in the latter, it is rendered 

 soluble in the soil, whence it is taken in to the 

 plant. But in some so-called carnivorous or insec- 

 tivorous plants we have, as in dioncea, an apparatus 

 which catches insects, secretes a fluid similar to 

 gastric juice to digest them, and then absorbs all 

 the parts disolved ; just as is done by some of the 

 lower forms of polypi or medusae, which catch aquatic 

 insects and folding their skin over them absorb all 

 that is soluble of them, for others, such as utricularia, 

 we find bladders attached to the plant, these are fur- 

 nished at their mouth with peculiar hair like processes 

 of cilia, which have a vibratory motion, and in this 

 and in their general appearance resemble many forms 

 of polypi and medusae. These bladders entrap minute 

 aquatic insects, which being digested in them the 

 soluble parts are absorbed by the plant. They are in 

 reality outside stomachs. 



Again we have in some other genera, large 

 tubular leaves or outside stomachs, furnished with 

 various appliances for catching insects and digesting 

 the soluble parts. 



All this goes to prove the analogy as above stated ', 



