4 Chapters in Modern Botany CHAP. 



runs upwards from the very ground, as if expressly built 

 for ants and other wingless creepers, while at its top 

 it is no less useful as a landing stage for winged explorers. 

 The finger-tip can easily be inserted, and finds the edge to 

 be incurved all the way round, while the descent into the 

 pitcher is of course close by. Slitting open one of the old 

 pitchers a gruesome sight presents itself two, five, nay, 

 it may be more likely twenty or fifty mouldering corpses, 

 chiefly, in our greenhouses at least, those of bluebottles and 

 wasps, but with now and then also a moth or bee. 



Sarracenia. To understand all these peculiarities of 

 form and life we may best pass to the allied genus 

 Sarracenia, of which there are a good many different 

 species of similar habit and habitat, but wider distribution, 

 the genus ranging from Florida to Canada. The form is 

 less perplexing, the hollow leaves are now simply trumpet- 

 shaped, and instead of being rolled through a semicircle 

 and curiously narrowed, open widely towards the sky, 

 while the forked pennon of Darlingtonia is obviously 

 represented by an almost circular or somewhat pointed 

 leafy expansion, sometimes sloping over the mouth, like a 

 half open lid or cover, large enough to throw off rain, but 

 often also standing erect and conspicuous, the whole effect 

 being often no less attractive to botanist or bluebottle than 

 that of the Darlingtonia itself (Fig. i, p. 3). Here 

 clearly we have the simple form ; and passing from the 

 empirical facts of geographical distribution towards that 

 interpretation the healthy childish or scientific mind cannot 

 but demand, we can hardly fail to suspect that Darling- 

 tonia is but the most outlying of the Sarracenias, one 

 which has wandered to the farther side of the Rocky 

 Mountains, and in that region become so much specialised 

 beyond the ordinary type as to warrant re-naming as a 

 new genus. Comparing the flowers, we find essential kin- 



