20 DROSERA ROTUNDIFOLIA. Caap. LL. 
exterior tentacles, near their bases, and does not (as 
will hereafter be proved) first travel up the pedicels to 
the glands, to be then reflected back to the bending 
place. Nevertheless, some influence does travel up to 
the glands, causing them to secrete more copiously, 
and the secretion to become acid. This latter fact 
is, I believe, quite new in the physiology of plants; 
it has indeed only recently been established that in 
the animal kingdom an influence can be transmitted 
along the nerves to glands, modifying their power of 
secretion, independently of the state of the blood- 
vessels. 
The Inflection of the Exterior Tentacles from the Glands 
of the Disc being excited by Repeated Touches, or by 
Objects left in Contact with them. 
The central glands of a leaf were irritated with a 
small stiff camel-hair brush, and in 70 m. (minutes) 
several of the outer tentacles were inflected; in 5 hrs. 
(hours) all the sub-marginal tentacles were inflected ; 
next morning after an interval of about 22 hrs. they were 
fully re-expanded. In all the following cases the period 
is reckoned from the time of first irritation. Another 
leaf treated in the same manner had a few tentacles 
inflected in 20 m.; in 4 hrs. all the submarginal and 
some of the extreme marginal tentacles, as well as the 
edge of the leaf itself, were inflected; in 17 hrs. they 
had recovered their proper, expanded position. I then 
put a dead fly in the centre of the last-mentioned leaf, 
_and next morning it was closely clasped ; five days 
afterwards the leaf re-expanded, and the tentacles, 
with their glands surrounded by secretion, were ready 
to act again. 
Particles of meat, dead flies, bits of paper, wood, 
dried moss, sponge, cinders, glass, &c., were repeatedly 
