320 DARWINIANA. 



ers, with variously less efficient and less advantageously 

 arranged insectivorous apparatus, which, in the lan- 

 guage of the new science, may be either on the way to 

 acquire something better, or of losing what they may 

 have had, while now adapting themselves to a proper 

 vegetable life. There is one member of the family 

 (I)rosoj)hylliim£usitanicum), an almost shrubby plant, 

 which grows on dry and sunny hills in Portugal and 

 Morocco — which the villagers call "the fly-catcher," 

 and hang up in their cottages for the purpose — the 

 glandular tentacles of which have wholly lost their 

 powers of movement, if they ever had any, but which 

 still secrete, digest, and absorb, being roused to great 

 activity by the contact of any animal matter. A friend 

 of ours once remarked that it was fearful to contem- 

 plate the amount of soul that could be called forth in 

 a dog by the sight of a piece of meat. Equally won- 

 derful is the avidity for animal food manifested by 

 these vegetable tentacles, that can "only stand and 

 wait " for it. 



Only a brief chapter is devoted to Dioncea of 

 North Carolina, the Venus's fly-trap, albeit, "from 

 the rapidity and force of its movements, one of the 

 most wonderful in the world." It is of the same 

 family as the sundew; but the action is transferred 

 from tentacles on the leaf to the body of the leaf 

 itself, which is transformed into a spring-trap, closing 

 with a sudden movement over the alighted insect. No 

 secretion is provided beforehand either for allurement 

 or detention ; but after the captive is secured, micro- 

 scopic glands within the surface of the leaf pour out 

 an abundant gastric juice to digest it. Mrs. Glass's 



