480 THE UNIVERSE. 



it and surrounded by glands which distil a sugary fluid. 

 When some imprudent insect, attracted by the honied 

 juice, lights upon the leaf, this, irritated by the contact, 

 suddenly brings its lobes together, just as we close a book, 

 and pierces it with its darts, compressing it more closely 

 in proportion as it struggles harder. The palettes only 

 open when the animal, quite exhausted, ceases to move, 

 Ijut it is then frequently too late; the insect is dead. 

 The leaflets contract with such force, that when they are 

 closed they tear sooner than open. ^ 



One of our marsh plants, the sun-dew, or Eound-leaved 

 Drosera {Droseva rotimdifolia, Linn.), is ecjuall)' treacher- 

 ous with respect to little winged insects, but after another 

 method, which we might almost call physico-vital. All the 

 upper surface of its leaves is covered with long slender 

 fllaments, each bearing at its end a little drop of glutinous 

 fluid, and every imprudent fly that comes among them for 

 the purposes of plunder finds there a certain death. Its 

 wings and feet being glued with the secretion, all escape 

 is rendered impossible. Whenever on a botanical excursion 

 we find this plant towards the mouth of the Seine, we 

 always observe that its leaves are plentifully garnished 

 with the dead bodies of its victims.^ 



' AceorJiug to an English savant, the Elytrap Diono?a [Dlonira 'iriiiscijjiihi) 

 does not close the panels of its trap merely to piuiish the insect which irritates 

 it, but to suck out and feed on its juices, so that it would be a carnivorous plant. 

 This observer maintains that such food is so indispensable to the plant, that it 

 fades when deprived of it by inclosing it in a framework of wire or perforated 

 zinc; although if from time to time a few morsels of meat be placed upon its leaves, 

 die Dionasa remains healthy even when here. 



^ The dog's-bane {Apocijnum aiidroscemifolium), a native originally of Xorth 

 America, destroys flies \>j catching them by the extremity of the proboscis. So 

 so(.)n as the fly, attracted by the honey on the expanded blossom, iirotrudes its 

 jiroboscis in order to regale itself, the filaments close and seize it by the ex- 

 tremity of the organ with a gra.sp which is never relaxed till the luckless insect is 

 cpiiet in the arms of death — a death ajjparently occasioned by exhaustion alone. — Tr. 



