4.30 Mr. Bentham on the Heliamphora nutans, 



cell, forming a hollow tube, in which in the dried state there appears to be 

 more or less of congealed matter, probably fluid when fresh. These secreting 

 hairs are somewhat conical in Heliamphora, very long and slender, but with 

 the same structure in Sarracenia purpurea. 



Notwithstanding several memoirs which have been already published on 

 the Sarracenice, it does not appear that any course of observation and experi- 

 ment on the living plant has ever been closely and carefully followed up with 

 a view to ascertaining the precise nature and functions of the abovementioned 

 very distinct portions of these singular pitchers. They are constantly observed 

 with more or less of an aqueous fluid in them, which is generally supposed to 

 be chiefly, if not entirely, water derived from rains and dews, a circumstance 

 not at all borne out by the structure as it appears in the dried state. The lower 

 portion is evidently contrived to produce copious secretions ; the central appa- 

 rently smooth portion, often covered with an infinity of minute glands, appears 

 destined to some important function in the economy of the leaf, and the form 

 of the opening appears but ill contrived for the mere purpose of collecting 

 rains and dews. One effect of the singular clothing of the orifice is known to 

 be the retaining such insects as may venture within it, and some have even 

 gone so far as, on that account, to consider these plants as carnivorous ; but 

 surely, if killing the insects were the main object of this apparatus, it would 

 meet with better success than the imprisoning some half a dozen flies or beetles 

 during the whole season the leaf lasts. It were therefore much to be wished, 

 that American botanists, who have opportunities of observing these plants 

 under those circumstances which are natural to them, would carefully ascer- 

 tain the state of the different parts of the pitcher, the nature and amount of 

 any secretions, and any other phenomena that may take place at different 

 times of the day and of the season, at various ages of the plant, and under 

 various states of the atmosphere, which alone can enable us to found any con- 

 jectures on its physiological functions. 



The scape of Heliamphora, instead of being one-flowered, as in Sarracenia, 

 bears a loose raceme of from two to six nodding flowers, borne on short pedi- 

 cels, each pedicel springing from the axilla of a concave bract, similar in ve- 

 nation to the pitcher part of the leaves. There is no trace of any bracteolee 

 on the pedicel. 



