PITCHER PLANTS 157 



notice of what was published of your results, and then going 

 on to my own, as supplementary to yours, and undertaken 

 apropos of yours. I do not intend to make a paper of it. 

 I should like Nepenthes &c. results either to go to you 

 altogether, or to form a paper for R.S., but would really 

 rather you took them. 



August 17. I have been driven wild with wwk and the 

 Address, which I am taking down with me in an inchoate 

 state. We are off to-night via Stranraer. 



I have been working steadily at Nepenthes every day 

 and made a good deal out — its appetite for cartilage is simply 

 .prodigious — it reduced a lump as big as your finger nail in 

 48 hours to lovely jelly, and after 10 days there is not the 

 slightest trace of putrefaction in what of the jelly remains. 

 Nothing can be more lovely than to draw out the cartilage 

 attached to a thread after immersion, it looks like a ball of 

 rock crystal refracting the light most beautifully. I got 

 little or no action by fluid withdrawn from pitcher and kept 

 in a tube — nor with plants in a cold room. The digestive 

 fluid is evidently poured into the original liquid only after 

 immersion of meat. Fibrin as I think I told you goes ' like 

 smoke,' but not in a tube. I find copious honey-secretion 

 on glands of lid in all species but one, and in this one (the 

 only one of the genus) the lid lies horizontally back ! and it 

 would be prejudicial if it had honey, for it would decoy them 

 away from the pitcher. I have tried seeds, but results are 

 not satisfactory. After three days' immersion both mustard 

 and cress are killed — ditto in distilled water. One day's 

 immersion shows no difference. I must try seeds quite 

 differently. 



I have made out a good deal of structure in Sarracenia, 

 but nothing of action — it is not easy and secretion is scarce. 



As to Cephalotus it is a beast — it will not kill or eat, 

 and I am in despair about it — it does not catch insects to 

 any extent and I find no action in glands or cells. The 

 stomata in the pitcher is an exception to all these pitcher 

 plants and shows that this cannot depend on the secretion 

 much, it forms very little water indeed. I have made out 

 the secreting glands, seen them secrete acid fluid, but I 

 can't excite them to secrete. Cartilage rots very soon in 

 the pitcher and fibrin remains unchanged. 



