166 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS PREPARATIONS. 



make a study of it to find out all I can of its intimate structure, 

 and of the life history connected with it if it is an organism. 

 So if there is anything of interest to you in my talk this evening 

 it must come from these special studies. 



When I came home from Florida last winter, I brought with me 

 some herbarium specimens of nearly all the insectivorous plants 

 those which catch and digest insects in some way or other as 

 a part of their food. Among them are these leaves of the 

 Pitcher plant, some species of which you have probably all seen. 

 This is the Sarracenia variolaris which grows only in the Southern 

 States that are on the Atlantic coast. The leaves are composed 

 of a hollow conical tube running down to a point on the stem, of 

 a projecting wing or flange which follows all the way up on the 

 inner side of the leaf, and of a hood which in this species arches 

 over the entire opening of the tube. This tube during the 

 growing season is usually nearly full of water, which we must 

 suppose to be secreted and furnished by the leaf itself, because 

 the hood would effectually keep out all rain water. At the bot- 

 tom of the tube is a perfect mass of the hard and indigestible 

 parts of insects heads by the hundreds a veritable Golgotha 

 of skulls. Now it is evident that there must be something about 

 these leaves that is very attractive to insects, in order to make 

 them go in under that suspicious looking monk's-hood ; and then 

 some further peculiarity that makes them fall in such numbers 

 into the well below. Insects do not drop into ordinary receptacles 

 of water in that way ; for if they did there would soon be none 

 left to fall into anything. 



Mrs. Treat, of Yineland, N. J., who is quite an observer and 

 writer on the insectivorous plants, says that the edge of the wing 

 secretes a sweet and intoxicating fluid which, as the flies drink it, 

 and at the same time crawl up the blade, gradually inebriates 

 them until, as they rise over the lid of the tube, they tumble 

 headlong into the well beneath. I do not myself think it is 

 necessary to suppose anything more than an ordinary sweet 

 secretion from the glands which are specially numerous under 

 the hood and all around the mouth of the tube. When I show 

 you, under the microscope, the formidable array of bristling 



