252 
DIONiEA MUSCIPULA. 
sissimtis seventy-two, C Jenkinsoni one hundred and ninety-four. I prefer growing- 
them in wooden tiibs^, with nice stakes fixed to the tub, to the usual mode of sup- 
porting- them by sticks driven into the ball of the plant, which I consider injures 
the fibre, and makes the plant appear unsig-htly." 
By the above treatment, Mr. Green grows most beautiful specimens ; indeed 
the plants that he has at different times exhibited at the Horticultural Society's 
Gardens, and in Regent Street, are the most splendid we ever remember to have 
seen. 
DION^A MUSCIPULA, or VENUS^S FLY TRAP. 
For a woodcut figure of this singular plant, we refer to the first volume, page 
61, of our Magazine of Botany, where an interesting account of its peculiar pro- 
perties will be found ; the following is selected from the August number of the 
Companion to Curtis's Botanical Magazine, edited by Professor Hooker, and which 
will be found to contain some very pleasing remarks on this very remarkable feature 
of vegetation. 
" This interesting plant, now common in all the gardens of the curious, but 
long supposed to be confined in its native country to almost a single habitat, is thus 
mentioned by Mr. M. A. Curtis, in his ' Enumeration of the plants growing 
spontaneously around Wilmington, in North Carolina.' The Dioncea muscipula 
is found as far north as Newbern, North Carolina, and from the mouth of Cape 
Fear River nearly to Fayette ville. Elliot says, on the authority of General 
Pinckney, that it grows along the lower branches of the Santec, in South Carolina, 
and I think it is not improbable that it inhabits the savannahs more or less 
abundantly from the latter place to Newbern. It is found in great plenty for many 
miles around Wilmington, in every direction. 
" I venture a short notice of this interesting and curious plant, not being aware 
that any popular description of it has been published in this country. The leaf, 
which is the only remarkable part, springs from the root, spreading upon the 
ground, or at a little elevation above it. It is composed of a petiole, or stem, with 
broad margins, hke the leaf of the orange tree, two to four inches long, which at 
the end suddenly expands into a thick ar.d somewhat rigid leaf, the two sides of 
which are semicircular, about two thirds of an inch across, and fringed around their 
edges, with somewhat rigid cilia, or long hairs, like eye-lashes. The leaf, indeed, 
may be very aptly compared to two upper eye-lids, joined at their bases. Each 
portion of the leaf is a little concave on the inner side, where are placed three 
delicate, hair-like organs, in such an order that an insect can hardly traverse ity 
without interfering with one of them, when the two sides collapse and inclose the 
prey, with a force surpassing an insect's attempts to escape. The fringe, or hairs, 
of the opposite sides of the leaf interlace like the fingers of the two hands clasped 
together. 
The sensitiveness resides only in these hair-like processes on the inside^ 
