106 FREAKS OF PLANT LIFE. 



the honey glands on the lid were absent, was a 

 species 1 in which the lid, unlike that of other species, 

 is thrown back horizontally. The secretion of honey 

 on a lid so placed would tend to lure insects away 

 from the pitcher instead of into it. 



From the mouth downwards, for a variable distance 

 inside the pitchers, the glassy glaucous surface affords 

 no foothold for insects. The rest is entirely occupied 

 with the secretive surface, which consists of a cellular 

 floor crowded with spherical glands in inconceivable 

 numbers. Each gland resembles the honey-glands 

 of the lid, semicircular, with the mouth downwards, 

 so that the secretive fluid all falls to the bottom of 

 the pitcher. In one species 3 three thousand of these 

 glands were ascertained by Dr. Hooker to occur on a 

 square inch of the inner surface of the pitcher, and 

 upwards of a million in an ordinary-sized pitcher. 

 The glands secrete the fluid which is contained at 

 the bottom of the pitchers previous to their opening, 

 and this fluid is always acid. When the fluid is 

 emptied out of a fully-formed pitcher, that has not 

 received animal matter, it forms again, but in com- 

 paratively very small quantities, and the formation 

 goes on for many days, even after the pitcher has 

 been removed from the plant. " I do not find," says 

 Dr. Hooker, "that placing inorganic substances in 



1 Nepenthes amptdlacea. - Nepenthes Rafftesiana. 



