332 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



saddle plants is permissible here. The latter, Sarracenias (Fig. 33), 

 are well known in the New World as fly-catchers. An attractive sur- 

 face on the leaf leads the fly to its fate ; a lower and glassy surface 

 prevents its exit, once it has entered the leaf; and still lower down, 

 is a surface studded with recurved hairs, which detains the captured 

 animals. The pitcher-like leaves of the " side-saddle " plants contain 

 fluid, but it seems pretty certain that the liquid in question does not 

 exercise any digestive functions. A sugary secretion attracts the insect 

 at the upper part of the pitcher, whilst below the true fluid of the leaf 

 is found, and this latter possesses undoubtedly an intoxicating effect on 

 insects. Experiment, indeed, has shown that this fluid intoxicates and 

 finally kills insects ; hence it is highly probable that the "side-saddles" 

 feed on the putrescent and decayed organic matter, into which the 

 bodies of the captured insects are finally resolved. The Nepenthes, or 



FIG. 34. LEAF OF NEPENTHES, OK PITCHER PLANT. 



true " pitcher plants " (Fig. 34), inhabit the Old World. In these latter 

 plants it would seem that true digestion of the insect-food occurs. 

 The " pitchers " are certainly contrived and adapted for the capture 

 of insects, whilst the glands with which they are provided secrete a 

 digestive fluid, by means of which the prey is dissolved and finally 

 absorbed as food. The pitcher-plant's leaf is thus a veritable 

 " stomach," and we must therefore rank these plants with the Venus' 

 fly-trap and the sundew, as truly carnivorous in habit, and as 

 evincing a high and specialised development of that habit, through 

 which they become related to the animal world at large. 



