108 REPORT—1874. 
that, although Linnzus had no materials for making any real investigation as to 
the purpose of the pitchers of Sarracenias, he very sagaciously anticipated the 
modern views as to their affinities. They are now regarded as very near allies of 
Papaveracee—precisely the position which Linnzeus assigned to them in his frag- 
mentary attempt at a true natural classification*. And, besides this, he also sug- 
gested the analogy which, improbable as it may seem at first sight, has been worked 
out in detail by Baillon between the leaves of Sarracenia and water-lilies. Lin- 
nzeus seems to have supposed that Sarracenia was originally aquatic in its habits, 
that it had Nymphea-like leaves, and that when it took to a terrestrial life its 
leaves became hollowed out, to contain the water in which they could no longer 
float t—in fact he showed himself to be an evolutionist of the true Darwinian type. 
Catesby’s suggestion was a very infelicitous one. The insects which visit these 
lants may find in them a retreat, but it is one from which they never return. 
innzus’s correspondent Collinson remarked, in one of his letters, that “ many poor 
insects lose their lives by being drowned in these cisterns of water” t ; but William 
Bartram, the son of the botanist, seems to have been the first to have put on record, 
at the end of the last century, the fact that Sarracenias catch insects and put them 
to death in the wholesale way that they do§. 
Before stopping to consider how this is actually achieved, I will carry the history 
a little further. 
In the two species in which the mouth is unprotected by the lid it could not be 
doubted that a part, at any rate, of the contained fluid was supplied by rain; but 
in Sarracenia variolaris, in which the lid closes over the mouth, so that rain cannot 
readily enter it, there is no doubt that a fluid is secreted at the bottom of the 
pitchers, which probably has a digestive function. William Bartram, in the pre- 
fage to his ‘ Travels,’ described this fluid ; but he was mistaken in supposing that it 
acted as a lure. There is a sugary secretion which attracts insects, but this is only 
found at the upper part of the tube. Bartram, however, must be credited with the 
suggestion, which he, however, only put forward doubtfully, that the insects were 
dissolved in the fluid, and then became available for the®alimentation of the plants. 
Sir J. E. Smith, who published a figure and description of Sarracenia vartolaris, 
noticed that it secreted fluid, but was content to suppose that it was merely the 
gaseous products of the decomposition of insects that subserved the processes of 
vegetation ||. In 1829, however, thirty years after Bartram’s book, Burnett wrote 
a paper containing a good many original ideas expressed in a somewhat quaint 
fashion, in which he very strongly insisted on the existence of a true digestive 
process in the case of Sarracenia, analogous to that which takes place in the 
stomach of an animal ¥. 
Our knowledge of the habits of Sarracenia variolaris is now pretty complete, 
owing to the observations of two South Carolina physicians. One of them, Dr. 
Macbride, made his observations half a century ago, but they had, till quite 
recently, completely fallen into oblivion. He devoted himself to the task of 
ascertaining why it was that Sarracenia variolaris was visited by flies, and how it 
was that it captured them. This is what he ascertained :—- 
“The cause which attracts flies is evidently a viscid substance, resembling honey, 
secreted by or exuding from the internal surface of the tube. From the margin, 
where it commences, it does not extend lower than one fourth of an inch. The 
falling of the insect as soon as it enters the tube is wholly attributable to the 
downward or inverted position of the hairs of the internal surface of the leaf. At 
the bottom of the tube split open, the hairs are plainly discernible, pointing down- 
wards; as the eye ranges upward they gradually become shorter and attenuated, 
till at or just below the surface covered by the bait they are no longer perceptible 
to the naked eye, nor to the most delicate touch. It is here that the fly cannot 
take a hold sufficiently strong to support itself, but falls” **. 
* Classes Plantarum (1738), p. 500. t Systema nature, ed. xiii. vol. ii. p,361 (1767). 
{ Smith’s ‘ Correspondence of Linnzeus,’ yol. i. p. 69 (1765). 
§ Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida (1791). 
|| Introduction to Physiological and Systematical Botany (1807), p. 196. 
“| Quarterly Journal of Science and Art, vol. ii. p. 290 (1829). 
** ‘Trans, Linn, Soe. vol. xii. pp. 48-52:(1815). 
