54 FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



Plant, that I could not resist the temptation to transfer it to our 

 pages. Mr. Meehan thinks Longfellow must have had in his 

 thought some image or memory of our southern Pitcher-Plant 

 when, in the song of the " Slave in the Dismal Swamp," he 

 made this life-like picture of southern vegetation, - 



Where will-o'-the-wisps and glow-worms shine, 



In bulrush and in brake; 

 Where waving mosses shroud the pine, 

 . And the cedar grows, and the poisonous vine 

 Is spotted like the snake; 



Where hardly a human foot could pass, 



Or a human heart would dare, 

 On the quaking turf of the green morass 

 He crouched in the rank and tangled grass 



Like a wild beast in his lair. 



Be this as it may, our plant is common all along our eastern 

 border from Newfoundland to Florida, growing in bogs and 

 swampy places, and flowering in the early summer. This plant 

 introduces us to one of the most interesting fields of biological 

 inquiry that has been opened in many a day. I refer to that 

 curious instance, which these and some other plants illustrate, in 

 which the vegetable kingdom seems to reverse the ordinary course 

 of nature and makes reprisal upon the animal kingdom for its 

 habitual foraging. In this as in many other departments of re- 

 search the interest has been greatly quickened, almost created, 

 throughout the scientific world, by the magic touch of that one 

 master spirit of the century, Charles Robert Darwin, now alas, 

 no more of earth! His monograph on Insectivorous Plants 

 marks an era in this department of botanical science. 



