AMERICAN NATURALIST 
Vou. XXVII. 
May, 1893. 317 
RECENT STUDIES OF CARNIVOROUS PLANTS: 
By JARED G. SMITH. 
N. Tischutkin published an article in 1889 in the Berichte der 
Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft on the cause of the digestion 
of albumen by the leaves of Pinguicula vulgaris L. in which he 
endeavors to show that the process of digestion is the result of 
the action of Bacteria. This is in opposition to the theory 
of Darwin and other authors that the digestion is analogous to 
the digestion by means of pepsin in the animal kingdom. 
In an article in volume XII of the Acta Horti Petropolitani 
he further discusses the subject and concludes that the pepsin 
of the leaves of insectivorous plants is not a secretion of the 
plants themselves but is a by-product formed by the numerous 
species of Bacteria found in the digestive fluid. 
In his former study Tischutkin performed over one 
hundred and fifty experiments, using extracts from the leaves 
of Pinguicula and small amounts of the secretions of the insect 
catching leaves. Into these extracts and secretions he put 
small cubes of coagulated egg albumen. In no case did there 
follow any peptonization of the egg albumen. These results 
impelled him to take up the further study of thé relation of 
micro-organisms to the digestion of albuminous compounds by 
insectivorous plants, using other species and genera. 
1$haw School of Botany, St. Louis. Read before the Botanical Seminar of the 
University i Nebraska, Feb. 18, 1893. 
