INSECTIVOROUS PLANTS. 303 



That the tubes or pitchers of the Southern species 

 are equally attractive and fatal to flies is well known. 

 Indeed, they are said to be taken into houses and used 

 as fly-traps. There is no perceptible odor to draw in- 

 sects, except what arises from the decomposition of 

 macerated victims ; nor is any kind of lure to be de- 

 tected at the mouth of the pitcher of the common 

 purple-flowered species. Some incredulity was there- 

 fore natural when it was stated by a Carolinian corre- 

 spondent (Mr. B. F. Grady) that in the long-leaved, 

 yellow-flowered species the lid just above the mouth 

 of the tubular pitcher habitually secretes drops of a 

 sweet and viscid liquid, which attracts flies and appar- 

 ently intoxicates them, since those that sip it soon 

 become unsteady in gait and mostly fall irretrievably 

 into the well beneath. But upon cultivating plants 

 of this species, obtained for the purpose, the existence 

 of this lure was abundantly verified ; and, although 

 we cannot vouch for its inebriating quality, we can 

 no longer regard it as unlikely. 



No sooner was it thus ascertained that at least one 

 species of Sarracenia allures flies to their ruin than it 

 began to appear that — just as in the case of Drosera — 

 most of this was a mere revival of obsolete knowledge. 

 The " insect-destroying process " was known and well 

 described sixty years ago, the part played by the sweet 

 exudation indicated, and even the intoxication per- 

 haps hinted at, although evidently little thought of in 

 those ante-temperance days. Dr. James Macbride, of 

 South Carolina — the early associate of Elliott in his 

 " Botany of South Carolina and Georgia," and to 

 whose death, at the age of thirty-three, cutting short 



