SUNDEW AND BUTTERWORT. 137 



wierdest poet's special attention. The leaves are round 

 and long-stalked, pressed flat in a tuft or rosette against 

 the ground, and rather red than green externally even 

 at a first casual glance. But when you look closer, you 

 see that the actual blade itself is more or less faintly 

 greenish, and that the redness of its surface is due to a 

 number of living and moveable viscid hairs, each con- 

 sisting of a long neck, capped by a little globular 

 crimson gland as big as a pinhead. Some of the leaves 

 have folded over their edges or rolled in upon them- 

 selves ; and if you open them you will find in the centre 

 two or three decaying carcasses of flies. Whenever the 

 insect lights upon the blade, attracted by the bright red 

 glands with their honey-like secretion, he gets clogged 

 at once by the sticky hairs, and cannot drag himself 

 away from the corrosive acid for all his frantic efforts. 

 For my own part, I cannot watch the poor creature 

 struggling to free his legs and wings from this horrible, 

 impassive, blood-sucking plant without at once assisting 

 him out of his trouble ; for my instincts will not allow 

 me to appraise the 'divine dexterity' of nature in 

 causing destruction so highly as some of our idealistic 

 humanitarians have done ; it is impossible not to feel 

 a little thrill of horror at this battle between the sentient 

 and the insentient, where the insentient always wins 

 this combination of seeming cunning and apparent 

 hunger for blood on the part of a rooted, inanimate 

 plant against a breathing, flying, conscious insect. But 

 with a little bit of raw beef one can see the whole pro- 

 cess just as well, and far less cruelly ; for after all, man 

 shrinks from seeing what unconscious nature does not 

 shrink from designing with minute prevision and care. 



