A GARDEN DIARY 181 
undecided. In the case of a little Portuguese 
relative, one Drosophylum lusitanicum (growing, 
unlike other members of the family, upon dry 
hills in the neighbourhood of Oporto) such a 
power appears undoubtedly to exist, the people 
of the neighbourhood using it as a flycatcher, 
and hanging it upon their walls for that express 
purpose. 
This meat-eating habit or instinct (whichever 
we may agree to call it) is shared to a greater or 
less extent by all the Droseracez, such as the 
Venus’s fly-trap, the Byblis gigantea of Australia, 
and a small but curious aquatic cousin, known to 
botanists by the formidable name of Aldrovanda 
vesiculosa, whose tiny leaves have the power of 
shutting vice-like over every unfortunate insect 
which approaches them, and which thus finds 
itself enclosed in a floating prison. If eminently 
characteristic of them, this carnivorousness is by 
no means confined however to the sundews, and 
their allies. If anything the Pinguiculas, for in- 
stance, rather exceed them in voracity. Few 
plants are at once so beautiful, and so interesting 
from the problems to which their distribution 
gives rise, as is the great Irish butterwort — 
Pinguicula grandiflora. Unknown to England 
and Scotland; unknown to the whole north of 
Europe; unknown even to the rest of Ireland; 
its viscid green rosettes may be seen on most of 
the lowlands of Kerry, and upon many of the 
