98 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



entrap them, while the water is provided to tempt as well as to 

 retain them." 



Sir J. E. Smith here makes two valuable and original sugges- 

 tions : (1) that the pitchers are capable of secreting liquid ; and 

 (2) that their use is to entrap insects, which may serve to nourish 

 the plant. The correctness of the second suggestion was soon 

 confirmed. Macbride, in a letter addressed to Sir J. E. Smith, 

 dated April 11, 1815 (" Trans. Linn. Soc.,"xii., 1815), points out 

 that in Sarracenia flava and adunca (variolaris, Michaux), 

 insects are attracted to enter the pitchers by a sugary secretion 

 produced by glands on the internal surface near the mouth. The 

 matter was subsequently further investigated by Mellichamp, 

 whose results are given by the late lamented Asa Gray, in 

 an article contributed to the " New York Tribune," and repro- 

 duced in the " Gardeners' Chronicle " for 1874. Mellichamp 

 devoted his attention to two questions : (1) Is the liquid in the 

 pitchers merely rainwater, or is it a secretion ? (2) Can the 

 pitchers digest the insects which they catch ? He concluded , 

 with regard to the first question, that the pitchers can secrete 

 liquid, because he found a few drops of liquid in unopened 

 pitchers when there had been no rain for some days ; and be- 

 cause he also found liquid in pitchers to which the admission 

 of rainwater is next to impossible on account of the overhanging 

 hood. The second question he answered in the negative, because 

 he found that small pieces of venison immersed in the liquid in 

 a pitcher did not undergo more rapid change than similar pieces 

 kept in water, though in the former case the meat " became 

 more offensive to the nostrils " than in the latter. Asa Gray 

 adds : -- " The only inference to draw is that the liquid hastens 

 decomposition, for it seems to me that decomposition, not 

 digestion, is what it comes to." Mellichamp himself speaks of 

 the flies, &c, becoming " liquid manure." In the same year 

 (1874), in his Presidential Address to the Section of Zoology and 

 Botany of the British Association (Belfast), Sir J. D. Hooker 

 treated of this subject, and says : — " It is known that Sarracenia 

 flava secretes fluid, but under what precise conditions I am not 

 aware " ; and of S. variolaris : — " That it secretes a fluid noxious 

 to insects there is no doubt, though in the specimens examined 

 I found none." He concludes : — " The fact that insects normally 

 become decomposed in the fluid of all, would suggest the pro- 



