INSEGT1 VOR US A XD CLIMBING PLANTS. 323 



made render it highly probable that they appropriate 

 their prey for nourishment ; whether by digestion or 

 by mere absorption of decomposing animal matter, is 

 uncertain. It is certainly most remarkable that this 

 family of plants, wherever met with, and under the 

 most diverse conditions and modes of life, should 

 always in some way or other be predaceous and car- 

 nivorous. 



If it be not only surprising but somewhat con- 

 founding to our classifications that a whole group of 

 plants should subsist partly by digesting animal mat- 

 ter and partly in the normal way of decomposing car- 

 bonic acid and producing the basis of animal matter, 

 we have, as Mr. Darwin remarks, a counterpart anom- 

 aly in the animal kingdom. While some plants have 

 stomachs, some animals have roots. " The rhizoceph- 

 alous crustaceans do not feed like other animals by 

 their mouths, for they are destitute of an alimentary 

 canal, but they live by absorbing through root-like 

 processes the juices of the animals on which they are 

 parasitic." 



To a naturalist of our day, imbued with those ideas 

 of the solidarity of organic Nature which such facts as 

 those we have been considering suggest, the greatest 

 anomaly of all would be that they are really anoma- 

 lous or unique. Eeasonably supposing, therefore, that 

 the sundew did not stand alone, Mr. Darwin turned 

 his attention to other groups of plants ; and, first, to 

 the bladderworts, which have no near kinship with the 

 sundews, but, like the aquatic representative of that 

 family, are provided with bladdery sacs, under water. 

 In the common species of Utricularia or bladderwort, 



