24 SARRACENIA PSITTACINA.—PARROT-HEADED PITCHER-PLANT. 
respect to the blindness of accident.” It is not our purpose to 
enter into any controversial questions in this work, but to give 
enough of facts on all sides to enable the student to form judg- 
ments for himself. Without therefore saying that the Pitcher- 
plants are designed expressly to catch and use insects as food, we 
may remark that Mr. Nuttall’s argument does not prove that 
they are not, for nature evidently loves to do any one thing ina 
great variety of ways. It may even be questioned whether the 
pitcher-leaved Sarracenias could maintain their vegetation quite 
as well without the water and insects. It is interesting to note 
how little leaf surface there is to act asin other plants. Scarcely 
anything is left but the pitcher's lid capable of absorbing matter 
from the atmosphere. Nature indeed seems to look on the 
pitcher as a substitute for leaf surface. In our present species, 
which has no insect-catching pitchers worth speaking of, she 
seems to have thought it necessary to compensate for this 
absence in the broad green wing, which is indeed the leaf of 
S 
an ordinary plant in all that relates to general functional power. 
Having no pitcher, it had to have leaves. Arguments of this 
kind are not however what the best botanists accept. Instead 
of looking exclusively to what a plant may do by evident ability 
from adaptation, what it actually does do is the safer field for 
investigation, 
- The Parrot pitcher-plant is confined to a small strip of our 
great country, between Louisiana and Florida to Georgia. 
EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1I. Flowering plant with the newly pushing leaves. 2. The 
broad wing. 3. Old leaf (of previous year), showing close resemblance to a parrot head. 
4. Cut-off portion, showing the very narrow tube. 5. Showing the “ five-cleft, umbrella 
style’? of Dr. Chapman. 
