PLANTS AND ANIMALS 71 
of honey by the epidermal cells upon the under surface of the 
lid, and on the rim round the mouth of each pitcher. The 
swollen and often delicately-fluted rim, in particular, drips and 
glitters with the sugary juice, and it would be permissible in 
this connection to speak of a honeyed mouth and sweet lips in 
the most literal sense of the words. Animals which suck honey 
from the lips of Mefenthes pitchers wander, as they do so, only 
too readily upon the interior surface of the orifice. But the 
inner face is smooth and precipitous, and rendered so slippery 
by a bluish coating of wax that not a few of the alighted guests 
slip down to the bottom of the pitcher and fall into the liquid 
there collected. Many of them perish in a short time; others 
try to save themselves by climbing up the internal face of the 
pitcher, but they always slip again on the polished, wax-coated 
zone, and tumble back once more to the bottom.” In some 
species the inwardly bent rim of the pitcher is fringed with 
sharp teeth which curve downwards and facilitate entry but 
forbid exit. 
Another very interesting Pitcher-Plant (Sarracenia variolarts), 
native to the marshes of Alabama, Carolina, and Florida, presents 
arrangements of somewhat different kind. It possesses a rosette 
of elongated hollow leaves, of which the ends bend sharply over 
like hoods. The narrow opening of a pitcher is just under the 
hood, from which a little flap hangs down. Allurement by colour 
is not wanting, for though most of each pitcher is green, its 
hooded top is veined with red, and there are purple blotches 
here and there. In this region, too, there are numerous trans- 
lucent patches between the veins, which from inside the pitcher 
must look like openings or ‘ windows ’. As in Mepenthes, 
honey is provided on the inner surface of the hood and round 
the margin of the aperture, from which a sugary ridge runs 
right down to the ground, serving as an attractive but fatal 
pathway to many wingless insects, especially ants. The pitcher 
is a pitfall of the deadliest kind, for its interior is clothed with 
slippery overlapping scales, of which the narrow pointed ends 
are directed downwards, so that insects, once imprisoned, are 
quite unable to climb out again. And if a winged insect tries 
to fly out it naturally makes for the apparent windows in the 
hood, for the actual opening faces downwards and is veiled in 
darkness, and in most cases falls back exhausted into the putrid 
