42 



HOW CERTAIN PLANTS CAPTURE INSECTS. 



narrow, that they are popularly named Tricmjjets. In these pitchers or tubes 

 water is generally found, sometimes caught from rain, but in other cases evi- 

 dently furnished by the plant, the pitcher being so constructed that water can- 

 not rain in : this water abounds with drowned insects, commonly in all stages of 

 decay. One would suppose that insects which have crawled into the pitcher 

 might as readily crawl out ; but they do not, and closer examination shows that 

 escaping is not as easy as entering. In most pitchers of this sort there are sharp 

 and stiif hairs within, all pointing downward, which offer considerable obstruction 

 to returning, but none to entering. 



90. Why plants which are rooted in wet bogs or in moist ground need to catch 

 water in pitchers, or to secrete it there, is a mj'stery, unless it is wanted to drown 

 flies in. And what they gain from a solution of dead flies is equally hard to 

 guess, unless this acts as a liquid manure. 



91. Into such pitchers as the common one represented in Fig. 37 rain may 

 fall ; but not readily into such as those of the vignette title already referred to, — 



not at all into those of the Parrot-headed species, S. psit- 

 tacina of the Southern States, for the inflated lid or cover 

 arches over the mouth of the pitcher completely. This 

 is even more strikingly so in Darlingtonia, the curious 

 Califomian Pitcher-plant lately made known and culti- 

 vated : in this the contracted entrance to the pitcher is 

 concealed under the hood and looks downward instead of 

 upward ; and even the small chance of any rain entering 

 by aid of the wind is, as it were, guarded against by a 

 curious appendage, resembling the forked tail of some 

 fish, which hangs over the front. Any water found in 

 this pitcher must come from the plant itself. So it also 

 must in the combined 



92. Pitcher and Tendril of Nepenthes. These Pitcher- 

 plants are woody climbers, natives of the Indian Archi- 

 pelago, and not rarely cultivated in hot-houses, as a cijri- 

 osity. One is shown on the vignette title, right-hand 

 side, and their way of climbing is mentioned in the foregoing chapter (19). Some 

 leaves lengthen the tip into the tendril only ; some of the lower bear a pitcher 

 only ; but the best developed leaves have both, — the tendril for climbing, the 



Fig. 38. Leaf-tenaril and 

 pitcher of Nepentiies. 



