266 LEISURE-TIME STUDIES. 



have very broad stalks, and which exhibit broad blades 

 capable of being folded in two as along a hinge-line. The 

 margins of the leaves are deeply cut, so as to provide the 

 blade of the leaf with a set of very prominent filaments. 

 When the leaf is expanded, three hairs, or filaments may 

 be seen to project from each half; and when any one of 

 these hairs is touched or irritated, the halves of the leaf 

 become folded together. The purpose of this is clearly 

 associated with the capture of insects. When an insect 

 unwittingly walks over the broad leaf-surface which lies 

 spread so temptingly before it, and comes in contact with 

 the sensitive hairs, the leaf folds upon it, and the plant may 

 thus be said to have laid a trap for, and to have deliberately 

 and intentionally captured, the animal. The use of the 

 filaments which fringe the leaf can then be seen. For if the 

 insect is small, it can escape between these filaments before 

 they have time to interlace with one another. If, how- 

 ever, the insect is of tolerable size, its endeavours to escape 

 from its prison, which, like the " iron cage " in the story, be- 

 comes gradually of smaller and smaller extent, simply serve 

 to further irritate the plant, and to cause its closure to be the 

 more speedily effected. Whilst ultimately, when the leaf is 

 fully closed, the filaments of the one margin interlock with 

 those of the other side, after the fashion of the teeth of a 

 rat-trap, and the insect becomes stifled within its prison. 

 It is not our purpose to follow out the further details of this 

 curious mechanism, save to remark that the plant literally 

 eats, or, at any rate, digests, the insect ; and when, some 

 weeks afterwards, the leaf uncloses, no traces of the hapless 

 animal are to be found. Thus the Venus's-flytrap presents 

 a singular exception to the rule of plant life, in that it not 

 only exhibits sensitiveness of a very marked order, but also 

 in that it appears to subsist partly on an animal dietary. 



A wider view of the functions of plants only serves to 

 confirm the idea which the consideration of the preceding . 

 cases impresses on the mind, namely, that plants certainly 

 exhibit sensitiveness. The familiar daisies the "floures 



