114 



HUTCHINSON'S POPULAR BOTANY 



congratulatory manner of flies, proceed to rub their legs together, but 

 in reality, I suppose, to clean them. It is then they betake themselves to 

 flight, striking themselves against the opposite sides of the prison-house, 

 either upwards or downwards, generally the former. Obtaining no perch 

 or foothold, they rebound off from this velvety microscopic chevaux de 

 /rise, which lines the inner surface, still lower, until by a series of zigzag 

 but generally downward falling flights, they finally reach the coarser and 

 more bristly pubescence of the lower chamber, where, entangled somewhat,, 

 they struggle frantically (but by no means drunk or stupefied), and 

 eventually slide into the pool of death, where, once becoming slimed and 



saturated with these 

 Lethean waters, they cease 

 from their labours. After 

 continued asphyxia they 

 die, and after maceration 

 they add to the vigour and 

 sustenance of the plant. 

 This seems to be the true- 

 use of the limpid fluid, for 

 it does not seem to be at 

 all necessary to the killing 

 of the insects (although it 

 does possess that power) ; 

 the conformation of the 

 funnel of the fly-trap is 

 sufficient to destroy them. 

 They only die the sooner, 

 and the sooner become liquid 

 manure." 



In the Nepenthes we have 

 another family of irreclaim- 

 able insect feeders. Each 

 of the pouch-like prolonga- 

 tions of their leaves is like the tall cups of the Sarracenias a kind of 

 external stomach which digests solid food. Here is a beautiful hybrid 

 Nepenthes inastersiana] which is to be found luxuriating at Kew (fig. 145), 

 Its pitchers measure three or four inches in length, but in most of the 

 Nepenthes they are larger. A Bornean species, probably Nepenthes villosa, 

 noticed by Dr. Hooker, "has pitchers which, including the lid, measure 

 a foot and a half, and the capacious bowl is large enough to drown a 

 small mammal or bird." These Nature-made water-vessels (or their contents) 

 have proved, indeed, in more instances than one, the salvation of travellers, 

 in places where streams are few and droughts a common occurrence. 



Though the pouches of Nepenthes distillatoria are comparatively plain, in 



Photo by] [S. L. 



FIG. 148. Nepenthes. 



A small portion of the inner wall of a pitcher, showing the digestive glands 

 by means of which the plant utilizes the drowned insects. Magnified. 



