VENUS' S FLY-TRAP. 



bourhood of Oporto, where the villagers call it the 

 " fly-catcher," and hang it in their cottages for that 

 purpose. The leaves are like slender filaments, of 

 several inches in length, with the upper surface 

 concave and channelled down the middle, and the 

 under surface convex. Both surfaces are covered 

 with tentacles of a pink or purplish colour, supported 

 on peduncles of variable lengths, with a cap-like 

 convex head. These tentacles secrete large drops 

 of a viscid secretion (fig. 6). 



Besides these tentacles are a §§'! lMsite^._ 



number of very minute sessile 

 glands, scarcely visible to the 

 naked eye, colourless, but similar 

 in structure to the tentacles ; 

 but with this difference in func- 

 tion, that they do not secrete 

 spontaneously, but must be ex- 

 cited to do so. Both glands 

 and tentacles speedily absorb 

 nitrogenous matter. When an 

 insect alights on a leaf of 

 this fly-catcher, the drops of secretion, with which the 

 tentacles are studded, at once, and readily, adhere to 

 it ; and as it moves other drops accumulate, until, at 

 length, bathed with the viscid secretion, it becomes 

 powerless, sinks down and dies, on the small sessile 

 glands with which the leaves are covered. The 



Fig. 6. — Glands on 

 leaf of Drosophyl- 

 lum, magnified. 



