2 Chapters in Modern Botany CHAP. 



or the like, but obtain the immense advantage of ministering 

 to some measure of reawakened curiosity, some freshened 

 feeling of the varied marvellousness of nature. 



The plan here adopted is practically a compromise of 

 the two. Beginning indeed with some of the strangest 

 forms and processes of the vegetable world, it is not pro- 

 posed to exhibit these merely as a vegetable menagerie of 

 rarities and wonders, but to use them as a convenient 

 means of reaching, as speedily as may be, not only (a) 

 some general comprehension of the processes and know- 

 ledge of the forms of vegetable life, but also, and from the 

 very first, (b*) some intelligent grasp of the experimental 

 methods and reasoning employed in their investigation. 

 For these purposes a very convenient beginning may be 

 made with pitcher plants. 



Moreover, they will be found to lead us more rapidly 

 than would many more familiar types to the point of view 

 of Darwin, and the reading of his actual works ; this being 

 of course most central and characteristic in modern botany. 



Darlingtonia. Beginning then far afield, in the land of 

 big trees and vegetable wonders, we find not the least of 

 these in a marsh plant discovered just fifty years ago . by 

 the botanist of an exploring expedition in the region of 

 the Sierra Nevada. A fresh expedition nine years later 

 gathered flowering specimens, but it was not until 1855 

 that the systematist Torrey formally introduced the plant 

 to the world as Darlingtonia californica (the surname 

 given in compliment to a friend). At first a rarity of 

 botanic gardens, it is now not uncommon in greenhouses, 

 and is very easy of cultivation. The flowers are large and 

 strange, resembling those of Sarracema, described below 

 (p. 5). The leaves, however, are yet stranger; they rise 

 in stemless clumps above their mossy bed to a height of 

 12 or 1 8 inches, slender tubes extending upwards like 



