228 



CARNIVOROUS PLANTS. 



This name has been given to certain rangements for their capture as other 



plants which have developed the curious forms. Perhaps the most famous of the 



habit of capturing insects and using them pitcher plants is one which is common 



for food. This behavior seems at first throughout the southern states. The 



sight most unplantlike, but it is discov- leaves are shaped like slender hollow 



ered that the actual food of all plants is cones, and rise in a tuft from the swampy 



practically the same as that of animals, ground. The mouth of this conical urn 



The chief peculiarity of carnivorous is overarched and shaded by a hood in 



plants, therefore, does not lie in the food which are translucent spots like small 



which they use, but in the methods which windows. Around the mouth of the urn 



they have worked out for securing it. are glands which secrete a sweet liquid, 



They are all green plants, and hence are and drops of this nectar form a trail down 



able to make food for themselves, but the outside of the urn. Inside, just below 



they live in surroundings which are poor the rim of the urn, is a glazed zone so 



in some of the material which they need smooth that insects cannot walk upon it. 



in the manufacture of food, so that they Below the glazed zone is another zone 



have learned to supplement their food by thickly set with stiff downward-pointing 



capturing insects or other small animals, hairs, and below this is the liquid in the 



When it was discovered that these plants bottom of the urn. If a fly is attracted by 



not only captured insects, but secreted the nectar drops on this curious leaf, it 



substances for digesting them, it was naturally follows the trail up to the rim 



thought to be a very astonishing fact. It of the urn where the nectar is abundant, 



is found, however, that all plants have di- If it attempts to descend into the urn it 



gestive substances to act upon their food slips on the glazed zone and falls into 



materials, and that animals are not pecu- the water ; and if it attempts to escape 



liar in this regard. It would seem, there- by crawling up the side of the urn, the 



fore, that the use of such food as the thick-set, downward-pointing hairs pre- 



bodies of insects and the digesting of this vent. If it seeks to fly away from the rim 



iood are not facts which are peculiar to it flies towards the translucent spots in 



carnivorous plants, but belong to all the hood, which look like the way of es- 



plants as well. cape, as the direction of entrance is in the 



It is interesting, however, to observe shadow of the hood. Pounding against 



the various devices which plants have the hood the fly falls into the water. This 



adapted for capturing their prey, and it is southern pitcher plant is known as a great 



these various devices which form the fly catcher, and is frequently used for this 



subject of this paper. purpose in the south. 



Prominent among the carnivorous The very largest of the pitcher plants 



plants are the pitcher plants, whose leaves is one which grows in the swamps of Cal- 



form tubes, or urns, or pitchers of vari- ifornia, whose leaves sometimes become 



ous forms, which contain water, and to as much as two or three feet high, the 



which insects are attracted and drowned, huge pitchers forming the most capa- 



There is a very common pitcher plant in cious receptacle for insects of all kinds 



our northern bogs, in whose urn-like and sizes. Its general plan is like that of 



leaves insects are found drowned, but the southern pitcher plant described 



which does not have such elaborate ar- above, in that it has an overarching hood 



