THE PITCHER-PLANT. 55 



Insectivorous plants are a group or physiological assemblage of 

 plants which belong to a number of distinct natural orders. "They 

 agree in the extraordinary habit of adding to the ordinary supplies 

 of nitrogenous material afforded them in common with other plants 

 by the soil and atmosphere, by the capture and consumption of 

 insects and other small animals. The curious and varied mechan- 

 ical arrangements by which these supplies of animal food are 

 obtained, the way and degrees in which they are utilized, and the 

 remarkable chemical, biological and electrical phenomena of pre- 

 hension and utilization can only be fully understood by a separate 

 and somewhat detailed account of the leading orders and genera." 



To give that would not come within the purpose of this paper, 

 and yet I think I may be able to embody enough of this strange 

 knowledge to give my readers some adequate idea of what happens 

 when a plant devours "insects and other small animals." 



Take for example the common Sun-dew, Drosera rotundifolia, 

 of our bogs and swamps. It has a circle of long-stemmed round 

 leaves which spring out horizontally from the bottom of the 

 flower stalk near the ground. These leaves, which are not usually 

 over half an inch diameter, are covered pretty thickly above with 

 flexible hairs, or tentacles, to the number of two hundred and fifty 

 or more, not longer than two-thirds of the diameter of the leaf. 

 Each of these tentacles bears at top a transparent drop of viscid 

 glistening fluid which looks very like a drop of dew in the early 

 sunshine. This gives the plant both its popular and its scientific 

 name. 



Insects seem to be attracted to the leaves of this plant, perhaps 

 by its glistening appearance, perhaps by its odor or color, or by all 

 combined. But if they come too near, or dare to light upon its 



