Masterpieces of Science 



well have been suggested by the behaviour of 

 certain alluring plants that so far from repelling 

 thieves, or discouraging pillagers, open their 

 arms to all comers — with purpose of the deadliest. 

 Of these betrayers the chief is the round- 

 leaved sun-dew, which plies its nefarious vo- 

 cation all the way from Labrador to Florida. 

 Its favourite site is a peat-bog or a bit of swampy 

 low-land, where in July and August we can 

 see its pretty little white blossoms beckoning 

 to wayfaring flies and moths their token of 

 good cheer ! Circling the flower-stalk, in rosette 

 fashion, are a dozen or more round leaves, each 

 of them wearing scores of glands, very like little 

 pins, a drop of gum glistening on each and every 

 pin by way of head. This appetizing gum is no 

 other than a fatal stick-fast, the raying pins 

 closing in its aid the more certainly to secure a 

 hapless prisoner. Soon his prison-house becomes 

 a stomach for his absorption. Its duty of diges- 

 tion done, the leaf in all seeming guilessness once 

 more expands itself for the enticement of a dupe. 

 To see how much the sun-dew must depend upon 

 its meal of insects we have only to pull it up from 

 the ground. A touch suffices — it has just root 

 enough to drink by; the soil in which it makes, 

 and perhaps has been obliged to make, its home 

 has nothing else but drink to give it. 



Less accomplished in its task of assassination 



is the common butterwort to be found on wet 



rocks in scattered districts of Canada and the 



States adjoining Canada. Surrounding its pretty 



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