X. 



INSECTIVOROUS PLANTS. 

 (The Nation, April 2 and 9, 1874.) 



That animals should feed upon plants is natural 

 and normal, and the reverse seems impossible. But 

 the adage, " Natura non agit saltatim" has its appli- 

 cation even here. It is the naturalist, rather than 

 Nature, that draws hard and fast lines everywhere, 

 and marks out abrupt boundaries where she shades 

 off with gradations. However opposite the parts 

 which animals and vegetables play in the economy of 

 the world as the two opposed kingdoms of organic 

 Nature, it is becoming more and more obvious that 

 they are not only two contiguous kingdoms, but are 

 parts of one whole — antithetical and complementary 

 to each other, indeed ; but such " thin partitions do 

 the bounds divide" that no definitions yet framed 

 hold good without exception. This is a world of 

 transition in more senses than is commonly thought ; 

 and one of the lessons which the philosophical natu- 

 ralist learns, or has to learn, is, that differences the 

 most wide and real in the main, and the most essen- 

 tial, may nevertheless be here and there connected or 

 bridged over by gradations. There is a limbo filled 

 with organisms which never rise high enough in the 



