108 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



of the soil, so that the plant would be at once a parasite and a 

 saprophyte. Krause, in 1879, minutely investigated the histo- 

 logy of the scale-leaves, and expressed an opinion in favour of 

 Meyen's conception of their function; whilst Gilburt, in 1880 

 ("Journ.Roy.Microscop. Soc"), suggested that the liquid secreted 

 by the glands is acid ; and further, that the glands not only 

 secrete but absorb. Some years later a remarkable theory was 

 propounded by Kerner and Wettsfcein (" Sitzber. d. k. Akad. d. 

 Wiss. zu Wien," xciii., 1886 ; also Kerner, " Nat. Hist, of 

 Plants," Vol. I., p. 136, 1894), to the effect that the cells 

 of both kinds of glands do not secrete at all, but possess 

 the power of extruding protoplasmic filaments through their 

 walls, which catch animals and suck them dry. This, if 

 true, would constitute an altogether new form of mechanism, 

 among the higher plants, for the capture of animals ; and 

 Lathrrea would be both parasitic and carnivorous. The point 

 has since been re-investigated by Scherffel (" Mitth. aus 

 dem Bot. Inst, zu Graz," II., 1888) with altogether different 

 results. Scherffel finds, indeed, delicate filaments radiating 

 from these gland-cells ; but not from these only, for they were 

 to be found at times on any of the cells lining the cavity ; and 

 not only so, but also on foreign bodies lying in the cavity. As 

 the result of his observations, he comes to the conclusion that 

 it is impossible for the gland-cells to protrude protoplasmic 

 filaments ; that the filaments observed are really nothing more 

 than sessile filamentous Bacteria : and that these cavities 

 cannot be regarded, from any point of view, as organs for the 

 capture of insects. Quite recently it has been urged by 

 Haberlandt (" Jahrb. f. wiss. Bot.," 1897), Goebel ("Flora " 1897), 

 and Groom ("Annals of Botany," 1897), that the real function 

 of these pitchers is to serve as organs for the excretion of water 

 by the plant, correlated with the absence of stomata by means 

 of which transpiration could be effected ; a view for which there 

 is much to be said. 



Dischidia is the last of the plants which claim our considera- 

 tion. The pitchers of this genus differ in many important 

 respects from those of the other genera with which these are 

 obviously comparable, viz., Sarracenia, Nepenthes, Cephalotus. 

 In Dischidia (D. Raffles ian a) the pitcher has neither hood nor 

 operculum ; and, as Treub points out ("Ann. du Jard. Bot. de 



