received without high admiration and astonish- 
ment. For my own part, though I have seen and 
examined no small number of plants, I must confess 
I never met with so wonderful a phenomenon.” 
Thus wrote Linneus — the second Adam, to 
whom had been sent, from all quarters of the globe, 
nature’s choicest riches, to name and to systemize. 
Never was creative design more evident than in 
this plant. The expanded leaf — an open trap, 
charged with an attracting fluid, waits for its vic- 
tim ; the moment its little interior glands are 
touched by an insect, it closes on the intruder, nor 
looses it again till all resistance ceases. Experi- 
ments indicate that the plant is benefited by decom- 
posing animal matter thus obtained. Our plate 
will explain this singular apparatus of nature. 
The growing plant from which our drawing 
was made was under the care of Mr. Cameron, 
Curator of the Birmingham Horticultural Soci- 
ety’s garden, and whose successful mode of treat- 
ment he has obligingly enabled us to describe. 
He says that the safest method of cultivating it 
is to pot it in chopped sphagnum, fine peat, and 
silver sand; covering the surface with sphagnum 
only. Then place the pot within a larger one, 
filling up the vacant space also with sphagnum. 
Water it over head, and place a small bell-glass 
over the inner pot, and plunge them in the shaded 
part of a cold frame, and then place a second glass 
over the whole ; the sphagnum will retain moisture 
for several weeks or months, and prevent the 
necessity of repeated waterings, which are so often 
injurious, even to marsh plants. 
