76 THE VEGETABLE WORLD. 
those used on board to preserve fresh water. I began to think I 
was under one of those hallucinations by which the sick are visited 
in fever when the refreshing draught seems to fly from their ~ 
parched lips. I approached, however, with some hesitation, threw 
a rapid glance at the pitchers: judge of my happiness when I 
found them filled with a pure and transparent liquid. The draught 
I partook gave me the best idea I have realised of the nectar served 
at the table of the gods.” 
To pursue our’ subject, however. In the Sarracenias a number 
Am Se of the leaves are long and funnel- 
SS dee : shaped, somewhat like a long 
p. 4 horn or trumpet, as in Fig. 93; 
while in.the Catchfly (Dionea), 
Fig. 92, the leaves are termi- 
nated by two rounded plates or 
leaves furnished with hairs on 
their outer edge. When touched 
these leaves close upon theit 
7 victim, and become, as it were, 
a charnel house when thus re- 
united. 
Among the many species of 
plants which have been described, 
there are scarcely two whose 
leaves can be said to be perfectly 
alike. “These contrasts sur 
prise the traveller,” says Au- 
guste de St. Hillaire, “when, 
Win sees, in traversing equinoctial coun 
Fig. 93.—Leaves and stem of Sarracenia, tri es, he finds himself surroun ed 
by thousands of forms which have among them all only one trait 
of resemblance—their elegance and grace,—when he sees the 
delicate foliage of the Mimosa, so sensitive to the touch, hangmg 
over the gigantic leaf of the Scitaminacea, and the ferns with 
their thousands of finely cut leaves growing upon the trunk of the | 
Eugenia, and mingling with Bromeliacea and Tillundsias, with 
their rigid and inflexible leaves.’ ‘ : 
But more than this, we do not find in nature any two leaves — 
ee 
