A GARDEN DIARY 183 
often happens that one may see flies and other 
small insects lying partially dried up and useless 
in the centre of the leaf. In one respect this 
viscidity appears at first sight to be inconvenient, 
the entire surface of the leaf being often covered 
with twigs, leaves, particles of boggy fibre, and 
such-like matters, which the plant has apparently 
no power of getting rid of. In the end this may 
prove however to be an advantage rather than 
otherwise, since it has been ascertained that the 
Pinguiculas feed, not alone on animal, but also 
on vegetable substances; the extreme stickiness 
of the leaves causes them moreover to act as a 
chevaux -de-frise, thus hindering small but 
industrious ants from making their way up the 
flower-stalks to the corolla. 
Yet another little group of bog - plants, 
namely, the Utricularias, or bladderworts, are 
meat eaters. In their case the fly-catching 
apparatus is situated, not in the leaves, but in 
certain small attached air - bladders, which are 
constructed almost exactly upon the principle of 
an eel-trap, and which, if opened, may generally 
be found to contain flies. Thus we see how 
discovery may be anticipated, and how one of 
man’s most boasted attributes—that of the 
Destroyer—may be wrested from him by a 
miserable little green bog-weed! Before the 
first Celtic hunter flung spear at wolf or stag ; 
before the Firbolgs, or the Tuatha-da-Daanans 
