WHITE AND GREENISH WILD FLOWERS 
that if this task of extermination had not been success- 
fully maintained by the birds, the same economic 
condition would have been developed in certain plants. 
And while we listen to reports of decreasing bird life, 
it is well to consider that there is also a corresponding 
increase in plant life. While certain birds are really 
becoming rare or even extinct, so are certain flowers. 
On the other hand, certain birds are increasing, and 
even so are certain flowers. So we find an active work. 
ing force with an assisting support and an unlimited 
reserve always available. The latter includes certain 
fungi that attack and overcome swarms of insects 
besides the real catch-them-alive plants like the Venus 
Flytrap, Pitcher Plant, Dogbane, Catchfly, and the 
Sundew. The last is a small flowered species having a 
smooth, red, slender flowering stalk, rising from four 
to ten inches high from a low spreading rosette of the 
most curious leaves. This remarkable, small, circular 
green leaf is suddenly narrowed into a short, flat, hairy 
stem. ‘The upper surface is slightly hollowed, and is 
covered with irregular, fine, reddish hairs, which exude 
a colourless, sticky fluid from their tips, that sparkles 
like dew drops. These transparent, glittering drops 
are peculiar to the Sundews and seem to attract tiny 
passing insects which, alighting on the leaf, immediately 
become stuck in the gummy substance. Then the 
slowly curling hairs hopelessly entangle their struggling 
prisoner, and finally the leaf, closing inward, enfolds its 
victim and ends its life. At this stage the leaf literally 
digests its prey with the aid of a new flow of a peptic 
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