266 



SCIENCE. 



held by this sticky substance until they die. The nutritious 

 matter is then dissolved out by an acid secretion, and is 

 ultimately absorbed into the substance of the plant by the 

 glands on the leaf. The edge of a leaf when excited by a 

 capture will bend over upon it for a short time ; merely for 

 the purpose, I think, of more effectually securing it, and of 

 bathing it in the secretions. The calyx and flower-stalk, as 

 I have already mentioned, are thickly covered with the same 

 mushroom glands that are found more sparingly on the 

 leaves. I have never seen any evidence that the flower ap- 

 pendages take any part in the digestion of insects. They 

 seem to be rather in the nature of an ornamentation than of 

 anything useful. For exhibition, therefore, or lor doublt- 

 staining, the calyx and flower stem will be found by far the 

 most attractive part of the plant. The best way to preserve 

 them, as well as all such small material, until wanted for 

 use, is to put them green into a common morphia vial with 

 a few drops each, of alcohol and water, and then to cork 

 and seal them up tight with melted beeswax. To prepare 

 them for the slide these objects may be treated precisely as 

 recommended for sections of castor-oil plant, but should 

 be mounted in a weak solution of glycerine in camphorated 

 water. 



If cells are made of rings punched out of the thin sheets 

 of colored wax, used by artificial flower makers, and then 

 coated with either liquid marine glue, or a mixture in equal 

 parts of gold size and gum damar, dissolved in benzole, 

 this method of liquid mounting may be as easily and safely 

 performed as mounting in balsam. In very many cases 

 simple water, made antiseptic in any manner, will be found 

 far preferable to any other media, both for retaining the full 

 and distended forms of minute organs, and for bringing out 

 the delicate markings of vegetable structure which the 

 highly refractive balsam would entirely obliterate. 



There is only one other insectivorous plant found in 

 Florida — the pitcher plant — Sarracenia variolaris , a species 

 growing only in the South-Atlantic States. It is found in 

 low and wet places among the open pine-barrens, but is not 

 as abundant as the others which have been mentioned. The 

 leaf is a hollow, conical or trumpet-shaped tube, with a 

 flange or wing running up one side, and a hood which 

 arches over the orifice of the tube. During the growing 

 season this tube is usually more than half filled with water, 

 which we must suppose secreted by the plant itself, because 

 the hood effectually sheds all rain-water from it. Crowded 

 into the bottom of the tubes of mature leaves, we shall al- 

 most invariably find a mass of the hard and indigestible 

 pans of insects. These creatures have been in some way 

 attracted into that suspicious looking receptacle, and once 

 in have been unable to get out again A mere partially 

 covered tube, however, with a little water in it, is by no 

 means a fly-trap. Not one insect in a hundred would fall 

 into that well and drown, if there were not some special 

 device absoluttly -preventing it from crawling upward. 

 Now a microscopical examination of the inside of the hood 

 and tube of the pitcher plant reveals the most skilful con- 

 trivances for securing" insect prey that could possibly be 

 imagined. In the first place, there are in the upper part 

 of the receptacle and about the mouth, great numbers of 

 sessile glands which secrete abundantly a sweet fluid, very 

 attracting to ants and flies. Further, there is on the inner 

 surface of the hood and mouth, a formidable array of com- 

 paratively long pike-pointed spines, all pointing backward 

 and downward. These grade off into a shorter, more blunt, 

 but still exceedingly sharp-pointed spines, which overlap 

 each other like tiles on the roof of a house. This kind of 

 coating lines the tube for a third of the way down, the 

 spines growing finer until at last they grade off into regular 

 hairs which line all the lower part of the tube ; spines and 

 hairs all pointing downward. An insect attempting to re- 

 trace its' steps after its ambrosial feast, would find nothing 

 which it could penetrate or grasp with the booklets ot its 

 feet ; and the wetness of the spines, from the constantly 

 Overflowing glands, would probably prevent it from making 

 use of any other device that insects may have for climbing 

 glazed surfaces. As a matter of fact no creature comes out 

 of that prison-house, unless it be with the single exception 

 of one cunning spider, which in some way finds a safe and 

 rich retreat under the hood ol its great vegetable rival. 



Iln: bodies of tin i apimrd |m:y fall into the fluid in the 

 tube and are macerated or decomposed, but without any 



signs of putrescence. Therefore the plant must at once ab- 

 sorb the animal matter, for otherwise this would cause the 

 infusorial life, which is called putrefaction. 



In order to show the internal structure of the pitcher-plant 

 leaf, it will be necessary to separate the cuticle which bears 

 the spines and glands from the rest of the leaf. To do this, 

 pieces cut from the leaf, and preferably those showing the 

 transition from one kind of spines into another, after being 

 soaked in water, may be put into common nitric acid, and 

 this brought up to the boiling point over an alcohol lamp. 

 They should then be immediately washed in several waters, 

 when it will probably be found that the cuticle, both the 

 inner and the outer, has already separated from the paren- 

 chyma. The specimens will need no further bleaching, and 

 may be stained either in eosin, dissolved in water, or in 

 anilin blue in alcohol. As there is only one kind of tissue 

 to be stained, it will be impossible to get more than one 

 color in them. They should be mounted, or kept in water 

 very slightly acidulated with carbolic acid. 



I cannot but regard the pitcher plant as the most highly 

 developed, and the most specialized in its organization of 

 any of the insectivorous plants. It differs more widely 

 from ordinary vegetation, and has more special and adapted 

 contrivances about it, than any of the others. Now, as I 

 believe that the truth of the modern evolutionary theory 

 will be eventually brought to the test by well-studied mono- 

 graphs, made by microscopists, on some such highly dif- 

 ferentiated organic structures as this pitcher plant, I do not 

 deem it a digression to present here briefly some inferences 

 which seem to me to arise from the developmental history 

 of this particular plant. Of course, if the pitcher plant was 

 developed from other and ordinary plants, it had at one time 

 the simple plain leaves of common herbs. It must have 

 early commenced in some way, to appropriate insect food 

 on these leaves, because every essential change was for the 

 betterment of the plant in this respect. The stem of the 

 leaves soon began to put out flanges or wings on each side 

 — the phyllodia of the botanists, which are not uncommon 

 among plants. And these outspread wings must have as- 

 sisted in the absorption of insect food that was washed down 

 among them. Then the edges of the wings turned up, and 

 curved around towards each other, until finally they met 

 and grew together, forming a tube and a much more com- 

 plete receptacle for decomposing animal bodies. A South 

 American genus, the Heliamphora, is just in this condition 

 at the present time. Then from some unknown cause and 

 in a way exceedingly difficult to explain, our Sarracenia 

 changed entirely its manner of capturing insects. The leaf 

 bent over the orifice of the tube, forming the hood, and 

 those remarkable spines and tiled plates were developed on 

 the inside of the hood and tube, growing backwards, con- 

 trary to the order of Nature. When all this was accom- 

 plished and fully completed, but not before, our plant could 

 commence its career as the most successful trappist of either 

 the vegetable or the animal kingdom. 



Now, according to the Darwinian theory, all these trans- 

 formations were the result of innumerable slight and acci- 

 dental variations, each one of which happened to be so 

 beneficial to the particular plant concerned, that it got the 

 start of all the others, and every time run them all out of ex - 

 istencc. One cannot tell how many million times this ex- 

 tinction and reproduction must have occured, before our 

 marvellously perfect little fly-trap was finally produced. 

 Excuse me if I confess that not all the canonical books of 

 Darwin are sufficient to make me put faith in the miracles 

 of accidental evolution. I believe in the fact of the gradual 

 development of the organic kingdoms ; for all science 

 teaches it. But I believe it was governed and guided by 

 forces more potent than accident or chance. The Being, or 

 the first cause, if you will, that originated the simple ele- 

 ments of matter, and endowed them with the power and the 

 tendency to aggregate into developing worlds, might equally 

 ;is well have endowed certain of them with the power and 

 the tendency to aggregate into ever advancing organisms. 

 There is no chance, in the myriad forms of crystalline and 

 chemical substances ; then why should there be in the 

 scarcely more varied colloid forms of living matter? In a 

 world that unfolds from chaos in one steady line of pro- 

 gress, that shows only design at every advancing stage, I 

 must logically place somewhere at its commencement the 

 Almighty hat of a Designer. 



