INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 289 



kind of food. My attention was called to a young brood, 

 that having left their nest before they were strong enough 

 to take wing, were stationed on the lead which covers a 

 bow window in my house. The,. mother was perpetually 

 going and returning, putting an insect into the mouth first 

 of one and then of the others in succession, all fluttering 

 and opening their mouths to receive her gift. She was 

 scarcely ever more than a minute away, and continued 

 her excursions as long as we had time to observe her. 

 When the little ones were satisfied, they put their head 

 under their wing and went to sleep. The number of in- 

 sects caught by this tribe is inconceivable. But it is not 

 in summer only that birds derive their food from the in- 

 sect tribes : even in winter the pupa? of Lepidopfera, as 

 Mr. White tells us, are the grand support of those that 

 have a soft bill 3 . 



I shall close my list of the indirect benefits derived 

 from insects, by adverting to the very singular apparent 

 subserviency of some of them to the functions of certain 



vegetables. 



You well know that some plants are gifted with the fa- 

 culty of catching flies. These vegetable Muscicapae, 

 which have been enumerated by Dr. Barton of Philadel- 

 phia, who has lately published an ingenious paper on the 

 subject 15 , may be divided into three classes : First, those 

 that entrap insects by the irritability of their stamina, 

 which close upon them when touched. Under this head 

 come Apocynum androscemifolium, Asclepias syriaca and 

 curassavica, Nerium Oleander, and a grass described by 

 Michaux under the name of Leersia lenticularis. The 



a White's Selborne, 106; b Philos. Mag. xxxix. 107. 



VOL. I. U 



