138 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



over the orifice. These plants are of great beauty, in some 

 instances producing pitchers of very large size. Thus we have 

 one kind from Borneo, Nepenthes Rajah, which is said to have 

 pitchers upwards of a foot in length and measuring 6 inches 

 across ; and there are others of hardly less dimensions, beauti- 

 fully ornamented with blotches and streaks of various shades 

 of brown and red on a green ground. Nepenthes sanguinea is a 

 rare but very beautiful plant, having deep-green leaves support- 

 ing pitchers which are frequently some nine or ten or more inches 

 long, and of a deep rich crimson colour throughout. Nepenthes 

 Northiana is another very beautiful and richly coloured variety, 

 with glorious pitchers. Nepenthes Mastersiana is a superb 

 hybrid, raised by Messrs. Veitch, between N. khasiana and 

 N. sanguinea, having large reddish-brown pitchers of great size. 

 Many other species might be enumerated, and all are beautiful 

 in a greater or lesser degree. 



I am not in a position to say what are the component parts 

 of the fluid "distilled" by these plants before the lid of the 

 orifice opens ; but we are told that it possesses the same pro- 

 perties that are given off by the other " insectivorous plants " 

 named above. It certainly has a great attraction for all sorts of 

 insects, and I have frequently found the pitchers so filled with 

 them as to have themselves become quite decayed and rotten 

 through the decomposition of their contents. There is a 

 wonderful variation in the case of the pitchers. Those which are 

 borne upon the leaves at the base of the stem have broad wings, 

 and the leaf- stalk comes up between them ; but the pitchers 

 which are borne upon the leaves higher up the stem become 

 long and pointed at the base, the wings are quite absent, and 

 the stalk is connected at the back of the pitcher. What is the 

 cause or use of this alternation or difference of structure I do not 

 know. The pitchers have a very cunning and highly curious 

 interior, which entices the victim to its destruction ; but here in 

 our greenhouses at home they only serve as highly ornamental 

 objects 



Nepenthes are plants which require to be grown in a hot and 

 moist atmosphere, and I have found that they like an abundance 

 of water to their roots during the growing season, and likewise 

 overhead from the syringe ; therefore the drainage must be 

 exceptionally good and free in order to carry off the super- 



