I-:i-:\- HOUSE PLANTS. 



259 



seeded it, and have raised seedlings from it, and yet I am constantly 

 without it. It is a bog plant, and difficult to grow. It is imported 

 in quantities from abroad, and when the next large importation takes 

 place I shall try several out of doors in an artificial bog, beside the 

 Drosera rotundifolia. When recently on a visit to the Botanical Gardens 

 at Edinburgh, I was delighted with the success which there -attended 

 the cultivation of this curious plant. The plants were grown in pots, 

 immediately under the glass, so as to have full exposure to light : in 

 fact, they were suspended from the roof. The pots were placed in a 

 miniature bog : a plan which commends itself to our minds as approach- 

 ing very nearly the conditions of their growth in their own country. 

 As I have already said, it is one of the most curious plants in the 



world, and should be grown 

 whenever it can be procured. 

 The Drosera dichotoma is an- 

 other interesting plant which I 



Fi<;. 529. Dionteu 

 muscipula. 



Fui. 53". Dariingtonia 



californica. 



FIG. 531. Cephalotus fol'icularis. 



There is a shrubby fly-catching plant from Portugal grown at Kew 

 which I do not yet possess ; and a still more marvellous fly-catching 

 plant, Darlingtonia californica (fig. 530), which has hairs in the inside 

 of a tube so arranged, that when the flies get in they cannot escape. 

 What the precise use of these fly-catching contrivances are, it is difficult 

 to imagine, unless they nourish the plant : certainly they are amongst 

 the wonders of the vegetable kingdom. 



There is another very interesting greenhouse plant from New 

 Holland, the CepJialotus follicularis (fig. 531). It is a bog plant, like 

 Venus's Fly-trap, and it has grown well with me out of doors in 



