110 rnprort —1874. 
the diminishing cavity; so that an insect, if once amongst them, is effectually de- 
tained, and its struggles have no other result than to wedge it lower and more 
firmly in the pitcher. : 
Now it is a very curious thing that in S. purpurea, which has an open pitcher 
so formed as to receive and retain a maximum of rain, no honey-secretion has 
hitherto been found, nor has any water been seen to be secreted in the pitcher; it 
is further the only species in which (as stated above) I haye found a special glan- 
dular surface, and in which no glands occur on the detentive surface. This concur- 
rence of circumstances suggests the possibility of this plant either having no proper 
secretion of its own, or only giving it out after the pitcher has been filled with rain- 
water. 
In 8. flava, which has open-mouthed pitchers and no special glandular surface, 
I find glands in the upper portion of the detentive surface, amongst the hairs, but 
not in the middle or lower part of the same surface. It is known that 8. flava 
secretes fluid, but under what precise conditions I am not aware. I have found 
none but what may have been accidentally introduced in the few cultivated speci- 
mens which I have examined, either in the full-grown state or in the half-grown, 
when the lid arches over the pitcher. I find the honey in these as described by the 
American observers, and honey-secreting glands on the edge of the wing of the 
pitcher, together with similar glands on the outer surface of the pitcher, as seen by 
Voul in S. purpurea, 
Of the pitchers with closed mouths, I have examined those of S. variolaris only, 
whose tissues closely resemble those of S. flava. Thatit secretes a fluid noxious to 
insects there is no doubt, though in the specimens I examined I found none. 
There is obviously thus much still to be learned with regard to Sarracenia, and 
I hope that American botanists will apply themselves to this task. It is not pro- 
bable that three pitchers so differently constructed as; those of S. flava, purpurea, 
and variolaris, and presenting such differences in their tissues, should act simi- 
larly. The fact that insects normally become decomposed in the fluid of all, would 
suggest the probability that they all feed on the products of decomposition ; but as 
yet we are absolutely ignorant whether the glands within the pitchers are secretive 
or absorptive, or both—if secretive, whether they secrete water or a solvent; and 
if absorptive, whether they absorb animal matter or the products of decomposition. 
It is quite likely that just as the saccharine exudation only makes its appearance 
during one particular period in the life of the pitcher, so the digestivé functions 
may also be only of short duration. We should be prepared for this from the case 
of the Dionea, the leaves of which cease after a time to be fit for absorption, and 
become less sensitive. Itis quite certain that the insects which go on accumulating 
in the pitchers of Sarracenias must be far in excess of its needs for any legitimate 
rocess of digestion. They become decomposed; and various insects, too wary to 
i entrapped themselves, seem habitually to drop their eggs into the open mouths 
of the pitchers, to take advantage of the accumulation of food*. The old pitchers 
are consequently found to contain living larvee and maggots, a sufficient proof that 
the original properties of the fluid which they secreted must have become exhausted ; 
and Barton tells us that various insectivorous birds slit open the pitchers with their 
beaks to get at the contents}. This was probably the origin of Linnzeus’s state- 
ment, that the pitchers supplied birds with water. 
The pitchers finally decay, and part, at any rate, of their contents must supply 
some nutriment to the plant by fertilizing the ground in which it grows. 
DARLINGTONIA, 
T cannot take leave of Sarracenia without a short notice of its near ally, Darling- 
tonia, a still more wonderful plant, an outlier of Sarracenia in geographical distri- 
bution, being found at an elevation of 5000 feet on the Sierra Nevada of California, 
far west of any locality inhabited by Sarracenia. It has pitchers of two forms; 
one, peculiar to the infant state of the plant, consists of narrow, somewhat twisted, 
_ * Barton, Tilloch’s ‘Phil. Mag.’ (1812), vol. xxxix. p. 107; Smith, ‘Introd. to Botany,’ 
p. 196; Macbride, 7. c. p. 51. 
t See Mellichamp’s observations, already quoted, ¢ Ze. p. 115, 
