VENUs' FLY-TRAP. 89 



which, in some respects, is more striking than even the 

 Sensitive plants themselves, for they merely shrink 

 away from the touch, while this plant firmly grasps, with 

 its wonderful leaves, anything that comes within their 

 reach. Its near connection ^vith the subject of the last 

 letter induces me to dwell upon its peculiarities at 

 some length, independently of its own most interesting 

 organization. 



Its leaves spread in a circle round the crown of the 

 root, and either lie fiat upon the ground, or gently ele- 

 vate themselves above the soil. They have no stipules, 

 or stipulaiy fringes, but consist of two parts, very dis- 

 tinctly separated from each other, and remarkably dif- 

 ferent in their nature ; one of these parts is a stalk 

 and the other a blade, but both so much diso-uised as 

 hardly to be recognised. The stalk is a flat, green, 

 wavy, obovate, very obtuse, leafy expansion, the veins 

 in which are coarsely netted, with curved branches, 

 which, growing to each other's backs, form a number 

 of somewhat lozenge-shaped meshes (Plate XXXIV. 

 1.). The blade is joined to this by a verv narrow 

 neck, and consists of a roundish, thick, leatherv plate, 

 slightly notched at each end, ha\'ing strong hidden 

 parallel veins, which spread, at nearly a right angle, 



vegetable, indeed, that had a faculty of distinguishing bodies, and re- 

 coiled at the touch of one, while it quietly submitted to violence from 

 another. Such capricious sensitiveness is not a property of the vege- 

 table kingdom. The spider's net is spread to ensnare flies, yet it catches 

 whatever falls upon it ; and the ant-lion is roused from his hiding-place 

 by the fall of a pebble ; so much are insects, also, subject to the 

 blindness of accident." 



