NEPENTHES. 



259 



around its orifice. N. Lowii, with thick, leathery, green, flagon- 

 shaped pitchers, and an enormous lid over its widened mouth, is 

 the most distinct and peculiar of all. The rim of its crater-shaped 

 mouth is nearly smooth and of a glossy brown colour inside ; 

 while the peptic or digestive glands in the lower portion of its 

 urns are the largest and most remarkable of any as yet discovered. 

 The narrowed waist or constricted part of this unique pitcher 

 and its leathery opaque substance render the lower swollen half 

 of the urn perfectly dark — a sort of " black hole of Calcutta" 

 to its insect prisoners. All the pitchers of all the Nepenthes 

 literally swarm with millions of the putrefactive forms of 

 bacteria, but the extra darkened character of the urns of N. Lowii 

 suits them and their work much better than do those of most 

 other kinds, which admit a certain amount of light from the 

 orifice, and have pitcher coats of a more or less translucent 

 character. As will be seen, the bacteria, wretched but useful little 

 imps of darkness as they are, have a fine time, revelling as they 

 do in the rich, soupy contents of flies, beetles, and ants innumer- 

 able. N. Veitchii (= N. lanata) is remarkable amongst all the 

 pitcher plants as being usually epiphytal on dead trunks or 

 branches of trees. Its leaves are two-ranked on the stem, and 

 some of them clasp around the tree so as to hold the plant firmly 

 in its position, which the weak roots alone would not do. This 

 plant growing on dead wood resembles its habitat, in being of a 

 dull brownish colour, and its pitchers mainly catch such beetles 

 and boring insects as exist in decayed timber, such as beetles, 

 and ants innumerable. Its pitchers, and also those of N. 

 bicalcarata, are constantly robbed of their prey by insect-eating 

 birds, and also by the quaint little Tarsier, which I saw now and 

 then carefully examining their urns. 



N. bicalcarata* is also visited by a species of ant which is far 

 too clever to be caught in the urns. This ant's object is water, 

 and to obtain this it bores a hole through one of the large sugar- 

 secreting glands of the stalk behind the pitcher, just below the 

 water-line, seeming to know by instinct — or is it experience ? — 

 that the water of the pitchers so operated upon will well up to 

 the hole as it does in a syphon pipe. The sluggard is told to go 

 to the ant for wisdom, but we find this clever ant going to the 



* Introduced alive by Mr. Burbidge for Messrs. Veitch. It had pre- 

 viously been found by Mr. (now iSir) Hugh Low on the Lawas river. 



