226 DROSERA ROTUNDIFOLIA. Cuar. IX 
changes of form, but after 24 hrs. were motionless; 
the leaf being flaccid and apparently dead. On the 
other hand, with leaves subjected for 48 hrs. to a 
strong solution of the poison of the cobra, the proto- 
plasmic masses were unusually active, whilst with 
the higher animals the vibratile cilia and white 
corpuscles of the blood seem to be quickly paralysed 
by this substance. 
With the salts of alkalies and earths, the nature of 
the base, and not that of the acid, determines their 
physiological action on Drosera, as is likewise the case 
with animals; but this rule hardly applies to the salts 
of quinine and strychnine, for the acetate of quinine 
causes much more inflection than the sulphate, and 
both are poisonous, whereas the nitrate of quinine is 
not poisonous, and induces inflection at a much slower 
rate than the acetate. The action of the citrate of 
strychnine is also somewhat different from that of the 
sulphate. 
Leaves which have been immersed for 24 hrs. in 
water, and for only 20 m. in diluted alcohol, or in a 
weak solution of sugar, are afterwards acted on very 
slowly, or not at all, by the phosphate of ammonia, 
though they are quickly acted on by the carbonate. 
Immersion for 20 m. in a solution of gum arabic has 
no such inhibitory power. The solutions of certain 
salts and acids affect the leaves, with respect to the 
subsequent action of the phosphate, exactly like water, 
whilst others allow the phosphate afterwards to act 
quickly and energetically. In this latter case, the 
interstices of the cell-walls may have been blocked up 
by the molecules of the salts first given in solution, 
so that water could not afterwards enter, though the 
molecules of the phosphate could do so, and those of 
the carbonate still more easily. 
