330 DAEWINIANA. 



sweet trail was known, it was remarked by tlie late 

 Prof. Wyman and others that the pitchers of this 

 species, in the savannahs of Georgia and Florida, con- 

 tain far more ants than they do of all other insects 

 put together. 



Finally, all this is essentially repeated in the pecul- 

 iar Califomian pitcher-plant {Darlingtonid)^ a genus 

 of the same natural family, which captures insects in 

 great variety, enticing them by a sweetish secretion 

 over the whole inside of the inflated hood and that of 

 a curious forked appendage, resembling a hsh-tail, 

 which overhangs the orifice. This orifice is so con- 

 cealed that it can be seen and approached only from 

 below, as if — the casual observer might infer — to es- 

 cape visitation. But dead insects of all kinds, and 

 their decomposing remains, crowd the cavity and satu- 

 rate the liquid therein contained, enticed, it is said, by 

 a peculiar odor, as well as by the sweet lure which is 

 at some stages so abundant as to drip from the tips of 

 the overhanging appendage. The principal observa- 

 tions upon this pitcher-plant in its native habitat have 

 been made by Mrs. Austin, and only some of the ear- 

 lier ones have thus far been published by Mr. Canby. 

 But we are assured that in this, as in the Sarraceiiia 

 variolaris^ the sweet exudation extends at the proper 

 season from the orifice down the wing nearly to the 

 ground, and that ants follow this honeyed pathway to 

 their destruction. Also, that the watery liquid in the 

 pitcher, which must be wholly a secretion, is much in- 

 creased in quantity after the capture of insects. 



It cannot now well be doubted that the animal 

 matter is utilized by the plant in all these cases, al- 



