Red and Indefinites 



Distribution Labrador to the Rocky Mountains, south to Florida, 

 Kentucky, and Minnesota. 



"What's this I hear 

 About the new carnivora ? 



Can little plants 



Eat bugs and ants 



And gnats and flies ? 

 A sort of retrograding : 



Surely the fare 



Of flowers is air 



Or sunshine sweet ; 



They shouldn't eat 

 Or do aught so degrading ! " 



There must always be something shocking in the sacrifice of 

 the higher life to the lower, of the sensate to what we are pleased 

 to call the insensate, although no one who has studied the mar- 

 vellously intelligent motives that impel a plant's activities can any 

 longer consider the vegetable creation as lacking sensibility. 

 Science is at length giving us a glimmering of the meaning of the 

 word universe, teaching, as it does, that all creatures in sharing the 

 One Life share in many of its powers, and differ from one another 

 only in degree of possession, not in kind. The transition from 

 one so-called kingdom into another presumably higher one is a 

 purely arbitrary line marked by man, and often impossible to 

 define. The animalcule and the insectivorous plant know no 

 boundaries between the animal and the vegetable. And who 

 shall say that the sun-dew or the bladderwort is not a higher 

 organism than the amoeba ? Animated plants and vegetating 

 animals parallel each other. Several hundred carnivorous plants 

 in all parts of the world have now been named by scientists. 



It is well worth a journey to some spongy, spagnum bog to 

 gather clumps of pitcher-plants which will furnish an interesting 

 study to an entire household throughout the summer while they 

 pursue their nefarious business in a shallow bowl on the veranda. 

 A modification of the petiole forms a deep hollow pitcher having 

 for its spout a modification of the blade of the leaf. Usually the 

 pitchers are half filled with water and tiny drowned victims when 

 we gather them. Some of this fluid must be rain, but the open 

 pitcher secretes much juice too. Certain relatives, whose pitchers 

 have hooded lids that keep out rain, are nevertheless filled with 

 fluid. On the Pacific Coast the golden jars of Darlingtonia Cali- 

 fornica, with their overarching hoods, are often so large and 

 watery as to drown small birds and field mice. Note in passing 

 that these otherwise dark prisons have translucent spots at the top, 

 whereas our pitcher-plant is lighted through its open transom. 



A sweet secretion within the pitcher's rim, which some say 

 is intoxicating, others that it is an anaesthetic, invites insects to a 

 fatal feast. It is a simple enough matter for them to walk into the 



380 



