PECULIARITIES OF THE SNAPDRAGON. 61 



tirrhinum majus) ; the white, the pink, and the com- 

 mon : and that beautiful deviation, with a white tube 

 and crimson termination, is slowly wandering from the 

 garden, and mixing with its congeners. It has not, 

 perhaps, been generally observed, that the flowers of 

 this plant, " bull-dogs," as the boys call them, are per- 

 fect insect traps ; multitudes of small creatures seek 

 an entrance into the corolla through the closed lips, 

 which upon a slight pressure yield a passage, attracted 

 by the sweet liquor that is found at the base of the ger- 

 men ; but when so admitted, there is no return, the lips 

 are closed, and all advance to them is impeded by a 

 dense thicket of woolly matter, which invests the mouth 

 of the lower jaw 



" Smooth lies the road to Pluto's gloomy shade ; 



But 't is a long, unconquerable pain, 



To climb to these ethereal realms again." 



But this snapdragon is more merciful than most of our 

 insect traps. The creature receives no injury when in 

 confinement ; but, having consumed the nectareous li- 

 quor, and finding no egress, breaks from its dungeon by 

 gnawing a hole at the base of the tube, and returns to 

 liberty and light. The extraordinary manner in which 

 the corolla of this plant is formed, the elastic force with 

 which the lower limb closes and fits upon the projection 

 of the upper, manifest the obvious design in the great 

 Architect, " whose hands bended the rainbow ;" and 

 the insects are probably the destined agents whereby 

 the germen is impregnated, for as soon as this is effect- 

 ed, the limbs become flaccid, lose their elasticity, are 

 no longer a place of confinement, but open for the es- 

 cape of any thing that might have entered. The little 

 black pismire is a common plunderer of this honey. 



It is a perplexing matter to reconcile our feelings to 

 the rigor, and our reason to the necessity, of some 

 plants being made the instrument of destruction to the 

 insect world. Of British plants we have only a few so 

 constructed, which, having clammy joints and calyxes, 

 entangle them to death. The sun-dew (drosera?) destroys 

 in a different manner, yet kills them without torture. 

 F 



