194 WOODLANDERS AND FIELD FOLK 



easy but exit impossible. There is nothing very 

 formidable about the delicate green jaws of the 

 vegetable trap, only that any tiny water creature 

 that ventures in to look round out of mere curiosity 

 never by any chance emerges alive. The first time 

 that the bladderwort was actually caught at its fish- 

 poaching proclivities, so to speak, was by Professor 

 Moseley, of Oxford. He and a friend had, in a large 

 glass bowl, a plant of this species and also a number 

 of young roach just hatched. The murderous 

 plant held several of the tiny fish in its jaws; and 

 upon an experiment being tried in a separate vessel 

 it was found that a single plant had captured no 

 less than a dozen fish in the space of six hours. 

 One of these was caught by the head, another by the 

 tail, a third by the yolk-sac, and in another instance 

 two bladders had seized the same fish, one holding 

 on at each extremity. In spite of all this tiny 

 ferocity it must be admitted that this little plant 

 poacher is more interesting than dangerous, and so 

 long as it confines its attention to coarse fish neither 

 the salmon-fisher nor trout-angler will concern him- 

 self much about its aquatic depredations. 



