351 
CARNIVOROUS PLANTS. 
By ALFRED W. BENNETT, M.A., B.Sc., F.L.S. 
LECTURER ON BOTANY, ST. THOMAS’S HOSPITAL. 
[PLATE CXXVI.] 
LD landmarks are fast being obliterated. In former times 
the mind even of the most scientific was trammeled by the 
idea that nature could be mapped out into districts, like squares 
upon a chess-board, each bordered by a well-marked line of 
circumvallation, and standing in a perfectly definite relation to 
the squares on either side. The objects of nature were supposed 
to be classified, not by man but by the Creator of all things, in 
accordance with a certain preconceived and often most fantastic 
ideal. It is only within a comparatively short time that our 
views on this head have undergone a radical change. The 
general acceptance of the theory of evolution has given a final 
blow to the old idea. Classification is now but a human con- 
trivance for tabulating the links in the endless chain which 
connects together all living things. The lines on the chess- 
board have disappeared, and have given place to the impercep- 
tible gradations of the colours of the rainbow. While we can 
still define red and yellow, and distinguish one from the other, 
we must admit a wide debatable border-land of orange. 
This change affects not only the ultimate, but even the pri- 
mary distinctions between organic beings. Even the division of 
animate nature into the two kingdoms of animal and vegetable is 
no longer unchallenged. No other naturalist of mark has, it is 
true, followed Haeckel in erecting a third kingdom out of the 
simplest forms of the other two. It is rather that not a single 
one of the characters which have formerly been relied on to 
distinguish animals from vegetables has passed unscathed 
through the crucible of modern research. The power of spon- 
taneous, or at least of apparently spontaneous motion, which 
was formerly considered to belong exclusively to animals, is now 
known to be possessed in an equal degree by many of the most 
lowly vegetable organisms, and even to be apparently a universal 
