Chap. XV.] BYBLIS. 279 



possessed the power of movement. Hence, in this negative 

 character, Koridula resembles its northern representative, 

 Drosophyllum. 



BYBLIS. 



Byhlis gigantea (Western Australia). A dried speci- 

 men, about 18 inches in height, with a strong stem, was sent 

 me from Kew. The leaves are some inches in length, linear, 

 slightly flattened, with a small projecting rib on the lower 

 surface. They are covered on all sides by glands of two 

 kinds sessile ones arranged in rows, and others supported 

 on moderately long pedicels. Towards the narrow summits 

 of the leaves the pedicels are longer than elsewhere, and here 

 equal the diameter of the leaf. The glands are purplish, 

 much flattened, and formed of a single layer of radiating 

 cells, which in the larger glands are from forty to fifty in 

 number. The pedicels consist of single elongated cells, with 

 colourless, extremely delicate walls, marked with the finest 

 intersecting spiral lines. Whether these lines are the result 

 of contraction from the drying of the walls, I do not know, 

 but the whole pedicel was often spirally rolled up. These 

 glandular hairs are far more simple in structure than the so- 

 called tentacles of the preceding genera, and they do not dif- 

 fer essentially from those borne by innumerable other plants. 

 The flower-peduncles bear similar glands. The most singu- 

 lar character about the leaves is that the apex is enlarged 

 into a little knob, covered with glands, and about a third 

 broader than the adjoining part of the attenuated leaf. In 

 two places dead flies adhered to the glands. As no instance 

 is known of unicellular structures having any power of 

 movement,' Byblis, no doubt, catches insects solely by the 

 aid of its viscid secretion. These probably sink down be- 

 smeared with the secretion and rest on the small sessile 

 glands, which, if we may judge by the analogy of Drosophyl- 

 lum, then pour forth their secretion and afterwards ab- 

 sorb the digested matter. 



Supplementary Observations on the Power of Absorption 

 by the Glandular Hairs of other Plants. A few observations 

 on this subject may be here conveniently introduced. As the 

 glands of many, probably of all, the species of Droseraccaj 



Snohs, ' Tralt6 de Bot..' 8rrt edit. 1874. p. 1026. 



