THE SUNDEWS. 37 



the power of catching insects and holding them, and 

 also of discriminating between digestible and indi- 

 gestible substances, these leaves secrete a fluid pos- 

 sessing all the attributes of a digestive fluid, dissolv- 

 ing without putrefaction just such substances as an 

 animal would dissolve in its stomach by the ordinary- 

 process of digestion, we furnish very strong presump- 

 tion in favour of their being called " insectivorous." 



Although his remarks were illustrative of another 

 plant, we may better quote here the observations of 

 Dr. Burdon Sanderson, as they apply with equal force 

 to the sundew as to the Venus's fly-trap. In his 

 lecture at the Royal Institution, 1 after describing the 

 ,plant and its mechanism, he referred to its power of 

 digestion. "When,'' he says, ''we call this process 

 digestion we have a definite meaning. We mean 

 .that it is of the same nature as that by which we 

 •ourselves, and the higher animals in general, convert 

 the food they have swallowed into a form and con- 

 dition suitable to be absorbed, and thus available for 

 the maintenance of bodily life. We will compare the 

 digestion of Dioncea with' that which in man and 

 animals we call digestion proper, the process by 

 which the nitrogenous constituents of food are ren- 

 dered fit for absorption. This takes place in the 



1 June 5th, 1874; reported in "Gardener's Chronicle" for 

 June 27th, 1874. 



