POLYANDRIA. MONOGTMA . It 



mile 5-celIetl, 5-valve(U many-seeded, valves 

 septiferous in the centre. 



Herbaceous plants growing in sphagnous marshes; 

 leaves radical alternate, deformed, half-wa)- sbeathiiig at 

 tlie base, tubular, tube open above, attenuated and imper- 

 forate below, the orifice partly covered by an inflected 

 lamina or lid, upper part of the tube dorsally alated, 

 inner surface of the lower part and operculum, retrorsely 

 pilose, so as to entangle and prevent the escape of flies 

 and other small insecls whicii attempt to shelter within 

 tiie lubes; scapes 1 -flowered, flowers large, red or yellow; 

 nnt'iers oblong, adnate to tiie filaments; seeds rather 

 large than minute; somevvhat scabrous. 



Species. 1. S. purpurea. Gps. The roost northern 

 species ot the genus, extending to Canada. Leaves ven- 

 tricosef. 



t The tubes of this species, as well as of all the following, are 

 commonly crowded with dead flies and other insects, perishmg 

 in imprisonment by one of tlie wonderful but simple accidents 

 of nature; — a lesson for the incaiitious! — but no proof of in- 

 sl\nct or necessity in tlie passive Sarracenia which could pro- 

 bably well maintain its ve^^etation without the aid of dead in- 

 sects, a remark equally applicable to many other plants which 

 accidentally prove fatal to msects, such as the wonderful Dio- 

 7i(fa, which in its native sv/amps as frequently catches straws 

 as flies, and will equally enfold any thing, so subject is it in 

 this respect to the blindness of accident. Of what intrinsic 

 benefit are fiies to a/ew of the flowers o^ Asclepias Si/riaca and 

 A. incarnata, for the accident here is far from being universal, 

 and to the smaller flowered species impossible from the mi- 

 nuteness of the organ 'P-'^'ch proves occasionally an insect trap 

 in the larger ones. The same remarks are also applicable 

 to the flowers of the genus Apocymim, and to the ciliated 

 glumes o^ Leer si a lenticularis, a property, which if instinctively 

 necessary to the support of this species ought surely to be 

 common to all the others, but their structure, however similar, 

 is not such as to produce t1ie same effect. 



These extraneous contingencies, like many others, admit no 

 more of direct appeals to Nature, than that which permitted 

 the leaves of the Aspen, and the flowers of the Briza forever to 

 tremble in the breeze. Still in the ascidia of the Sarracenia 

 there appears to exist no ordinary degree of ingenuity to ac- 

 complish a purpose apparently of such small importance to the 

 pVant itself. The tube often ventricose in its form, is attenua- 

 ted dov. nvv'ards, and terminated &bo>e by a widening aper- 



