6 HUTCHINSON'S POPULAR BOTANY 



that deal respectively with plants and animals, are its two main sub- 

 divisions; and Mineralogy is of necessity excluded. Of course it is only 

 with the first of these sub-divisions that we have to do : the subject 

 before us is Botany, not Zoology. The word " Botany," we may remark in 

 passing, is a Greek word, meaning any kind of grass or herb, and 

 botanike, in the same language, signifies the art which teaches the nature 

 and uses of plants. The dry look is sometimes taken off a subject when 

 the meaning of its Greek or Latin name is explained. 



That any difficulty should be found in distinguishing plants from animals 

 might at first occasion some surprise. A cow is not mistaken for a cucumber, 

 nor an oyster for a water-lily ; and even when we take objects externally 



Photo by] 



FIG. 18. AN AUSTRALIAN PITCHER-PLANT (Gephalotus follicularis). 



[S. L. Bastin. 



An example of a numerous class of plants that, growing in poor watery soil, are compelled to get their 

 food by trapping and digesting insects. WESTERN AUSTRALIA. 



so much alike as a walking-leaf insect or the leaf butterfly and the leaf 

 it mimics (figs. 13 and 15), very little examination is needed to convince 

 us how essentially different they are. Many persons have been deceived 

 by the interesting Haastias and Raoulias of New Zealand (fig. 17), curious 

 plants allied to Gnaphalium, which form masses on the bare mountain tops 

 so closely resembling sheep at a very short distance that the most ex- 

 perienced shepherds are often deceived by their appearance. Some species 

 of Mesembryanthemum closely resemble pebbles, as may be seen by oui 

 photograph of a plant surrounded by real pebbles (fig. 16). Here also, 

 however, the deception vanishes on a closer inspection ; and the same thing 

 may be said of many orchideous flowers, whose remarkable resemblances 

 to objects in the sister kingdom have been often dwelt upon as, for ex- 

 ample, the Bee Orchis (fig. 14). Nevertheless, in other cases real difficulties 



