26 Chapters in Modern Botany CHAP, n 



come once more. And so Darwin wrote On the Fertilisa- 

 tion of Orchids, and Hermann MUller, Hildebrand, Kerner, 

 Delpino, followed suit ; while MacLeod and a whole younger 

 generation are following these nowadays. 



Bionomics of Nepenthes. It is time to return from the 

 history of bionomics in general to our special scene ; that 

 of Nepenthes, luring and entrapping its flying and creeping 

 insect prey. We may now group around this some of 

 the minor incidents which naturalists have gradually 

 described. Thus a recent traveller in Borneo descants 

 upon the superior intelligence of certain ants, who refuse 

 to be inveigled into the pitchers, and succeed in drinking 

 its fluid contents, rich with the sapid juices of their less 

 wary congeners, by piercing and sucking the tendril-like 

 stalk upon which the pitcher hangs. He or another 

 even .credits them with knowing that water rises to its 

 own level, and so with taking care not to pierce the stalk 

 higher than the level of the fluid in the adjacent pitcher! 

 It is a good story, and constructed on excellent, one may 

 almost say standard, lines ; the sceptical reader may wish, 

 however, to know whether the ants, however, were not 

 simply licking up the sugary exudation of those glands 

 which, as above mentioned, were left to Dr. Macfarlane to 

 notice outside the pitcher, and which, especially in a species 

 so carefully treated by the ants, might fairly be expected to 

 be more abundant as one descended towards it. Be this 

 as it may, we owe to the same observer another interesting 

 picture, that of the odd little lemur (Tar sins spectrum) 

 prowling over the Nepenthes pitchers, fishing out with its 

 long-clawed fingers their insect contents, and confiscating 

 them to its own use. One species, however (N. bicalcarata), 

 he tells us, gets the better of the Tarsius, repelling, and if 

 need be punishing,' the robber by help of a pair of long 

 strong prickles which grow from the lower side of the base 



