PLANTS WITH TRAPS AND PITFALLS TO ENSNARE ANIMALS. 11^ 



Splachnacese. But on closer examination there is convincing evidence that this 

 moss also lives only on animal dung undergoing putrefaction. For remains of 

 broken mouse and bird bones are invariably to be discovered in the substratum,. 

 and there can be no doubt that the Tayloria chooses for its site boughs of old 

 trees upon which birds of prey have dropped their excrements. Of the mosses 

 living on the bark itself, one instance is also worth mentioning. Whereas in the 

 case of most species of the genus Dicranum, the mouldering residues of conifers 

 constitute the favourite substratum; there is one species, viz. Dicranwni Sauteri, 

 which is found only on the bark of the beech. The weather-worn bark of this, 

 tree is seen, in sub-alpine districts, covered with the most brilliant emerald-green 

 films of the above-named moss; whilst on adjacent pines and fir-trees no trace of it 

 can be found. 



PLANTS WITH TRAPS AND PITFALLS TO ENSNARE ANIMALS. 



A number of plants exhibit contrivances which obviously have for their object 

 the capture and retention of such small creatures as may fly or creep on to their 

 leaves; and it has been ascertained by searching experiments that the majority of 

 these plants use the animals they capture, in one way or another, as sources of 

 nutriment. For the most part the animals that are caught are insects, and hence 

 the term "insectivorous plants" has been applied to the class in question. The 

 flesh of the insect being the part of it principally serviceable for food, the name 

 "carnivorous" or "flesh-eating", or better, perhaps, "flesh-consuming" plants has 

 also been used; and seeing that the most important part of the whole process is 

 really the digestion, or taking in of organic compounds from the captured animals 

 after they are dead, we might call those plants which are furnished with organs 

 for the absorption of the dissolved flesh of animals ensnared by them, " flesh-digest- 

 ing" plants as well. As will appear from the following discussion of the subject, 

 no one of these names completely covers the wonderful phenomena in question, 

 and it is scarcely possible to flnd a short and not too cumbrous expression which 

 shall henceforward exclude all misconceptions. 



In round numbers we may estimate the plants which capture animals and 

 demolish them for food at flve hundred. Within this comparatively small range, 

 however, the variety of the mechanism for seizure and absorption of nutritive 

 matter is so great that in order to give a general picture of them it is necessary to> 

 classify them into several sections and groups. In the flrst section we have a series 

 of plant-forms wherein chambers are developed, which admit of the entrance of 

 small animals, but not of their escape. The organs of capture and digestion of the 

 plants belonging to this section exhibit no external movements of any kind, and 

 are thereby differentiated from the forms belonging to the second section, which 

 T)erform definite movements, in response to a stimulus caused by the contact of the 

 animals, with the object of covering the prey with as great a quantity of digestive 

 fluid as possible. Lastly, there is a third section wherein the individual forms are 



