56 FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



brilliant leaves, they will get anything but a friendly welcome. A 

 fly coming in contact with the viscid end of the tentacles finds itself 

 stuck fa->t. IK cannot get away even if but two or three of these 

 silvery dewdrops touch him. But his struggles to do so awaken the 

 active interest of all the neighboring tentacles, which immediately 

 bend over toward him and fix upon him their adhesive tops. In 

 fact an impulse seems to be spreading over the whole surface of 

 the leaf, which sets all the parts into sympathetic activity. The 

 leaf itself soon hollows under the victim and rolls up its edges, 

 and thrusts down upon him more and more of its animated bead- 

 topped hairs. Slowly he is pressed down upon the surface of the 

 leaf, drenched in the abundant fluid which the leaf and its tentacles 

 secrete, and in a quarter of an hour or so he is dead. 



But the leaf does not stop there. It holds its dead prey in its 

 close embrace till it has fully digested him, for its tentacles and 

 its superficial cells and glands constitute a true stomach, which 

 secretes digestive fluids and deals with animal substances in 

 exactly the same way that the animal stomach does. The nutri- 

 tious resultants of this digestive process are absorbed into the 

 tissues of the plant and help to nourish it. A chemical analysis of 

 the fluids produced in this vegetable stomach, and a careful obser- 

 vation of their action upon all nitrogenous substances which ordi- 

 narily constitute the food of animals, show that in almost all 

 respects it runs in an exact parallel with the functions of that 

 organ in the animal economy. It appears to be strictly car- 

 nivorous, as it will not digest vegetable or purely carboniferous 

 substances, such as gum-Arabic, sugar, starch, olive oil, etc. \\Y 

 have then here the leaf of a plant possessing a true animal 

 function. 



