403 
REVIEWS. 
INSECTIVOKOUS PLANTS.* 
TTOW often have we not heard the question asked by officers of the Army 
and Navy who have been abroad, What is to be done in a place like 
India ? what resources lie open to a man but hunting, shooting, and flirtation ? 
And what a splendid reply is given by the author of the work on Insectivorous 
Plants which is now before the world. It is to an ordinary person perfectly 
astounding what a naturalist of Mr. Darwin’s turn of mind can see in objects 
which have been under the eyes of all, and yet have not till now been 
properly observed. And the present volume is literally a perfect storehouse 
of observations which have been conducted by Mr. Darwin, and by certain 
foreigners who have been even earlier in the field than the renowned English 
biologist. It will, doubtless, appear strange to the person who is not well 
versed in modern natural history, that the present work has to do exclu- 
sively with the different modes in which certain plants capture, kill, and 
devour animals ; yet assuredly such is the nature of the book’s contents. 
Mr. Darwin covers more than 450 pages by his graphic accounts of the 
different plants he has watched, of their several modes of capturing 
their prey, and of the effects of different inorganic and organic substances 
on their power of digestibility. And of his mode of conducting his experi- 
ments, and his careful method of carrying on his observations, it is impos- 
sible to speak (as, of course, those who are familiar with Mr. Darwin’s 
writings would have anticipated) in too impressive a manner. He has given 
us the history of more than twenty different plants, some of them, as 
Drosera, at immense length, and with a vast number of original observa- 
tions, and others which were had with great difficulty from abroad, and 
which only allowed of a limited number of experiments, less abundantly 
experimented on, but not on that account with less accuracy of observation. 
In every case we note — what we have ever had to observe in writing of 
Mr. Darwin — that tendency to give the utmost credit to hr , fellow-labourers, 
even when the .observations made by them do not in any way agree with 
his own. 
Mr. Darwin appears to be the first who has accurately recorded those 
various changes which certain cells appear to undergo even in a compara- 
* “ Insectivorous Plants.” By Charles Darwin, M.A., F.B.S., &c. With 
Illustrations. London: John Murray, 1875. 
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