88 BRITISH SPECIES OP UTllICULARlA. 



of varying length, are sometimes supported by a short bract or 

 leaf segment, sometimes by two ; these bracts or leaf segments are 

 simple or bifurcate, suggesting the idea of a reduced leaf ; and a 

 little consideration shows that the bladder is in fact occupying the 

 place of a suppressed leaf, the one, or two, bracts at the base of the 

 bladder stalk representing the other divisions of a perfect trifur- 

 cate leaf. Darwin convinced himself that U. negleda and U. miiior 

 were nourished on the juices of different crustaceans, suited to their 

 respective powers of digestion ; no doubt U. intermedia also has its 

 particular fancy, and searches for its prey amid the decaying filth of 

 a peaty bog. This habit is by no means surprising when compared 

 with the life of a South American species, U. montana, which is 

 more or less Epiphytic and permeates rotten Avood and decaying 

 mosses or loose earth with its rhizomes, which bear numerous 

 minute bladders filled with water and provided with delicate 

 apparatus fitted to ensnare unsuspecting animalcules and exclude 

 undesirable rubbish ! 



I will treat the remaining British species briefly, partly because 

 I can add little or nothing in the case of a plant that is already so 

 well known ; partly because there is little likelihood of its being 

 confused with any of the three already noticed. 



U. minor, L. Stems very slender, usually little branched, more 

 or less leafy, rarely bearing some few bladders independently of the 

 leaves, and terminating in small glabrous winter buds ; leaves \-\n\. 

 broad, broadly orbicular, trifurcate at the base, trichotomously 

 multifid in linear acute segments, with no bristly hairs towards the 

 extremities, but bearing small obovoid bladders ; scape 2-6in., very 

 slender, erect or nearly so, purplish above, 2-3 bracteate, (below 

 the inflorescence), 3-10 flowered ; pedicels 1-5-Jin. long, reflexed 

 after flowering, 2-3 times as long as the calyx ; calyx purplish-olive ; 

 lobes ovate, deeply concave corolla about |^in. long, pale lemon 

 yellow, twisted in bud into an acute cone ; spur short obtuse, 

 about as broad as long ; upper lip spreading waved, not arching, 

 notched, as long as the raised horseshoe-shaped palate, margins of 

 broadly ovate lower lip deflexed ; stigma lobe subacute. 



