PECULIARITIES OF THE SNAPDRAGON. 61 
tirrhinum majus); the white, the pink, and the com- 
mon : and that beautiful deviation, with a white tube 
and crimson termination, is slowly wandering from the 
garden, and mixing with its congeners. It has not, 
perhaps, been generally observed, that the flowers of 
this plant, “ bull-dogs,” as the boys call them, are per- 
fect insect traps; multitudes of small creatures seek 
an entrance into the corolla through the closed lips, 
which upon a slight pressure yield a passage, attracted 
by the sweet liquor that is found at the base of the ger- 
men ; but when so admitted, there is no return, the lips 
are closed, and all advance to them is impeded by a 
dense thicket of woolly matter, which invests the mouth 
of the lower jaw— 
“ Smooth lies the road to Pluto’s gloomy shade ; 
But ’t is a long, unconquerable pain. 
To climb to these ethereal realms again.” 
But this snapdragon is more merciful than most of our 
insect traps. The creature receives no injury when in 
confinement ; but, having consumed the nectareous li- 
quor, and finding no egress, breaks from its dungeon by 
gnawing a hole at the base of the tube, and returns to 
liberty and light. The extraordinary manner in which 
the corolla of this plant is formed, the elastic force with 
which the lower limb closes and fits upon the projection 
of the upper, manifest the obvious design in the great 
Architect, “whose hands bended the rainbow;” and 
the insects are probably the destined agents whereby 
the germen is impregnated, for as soon as this is effect- 
ed, the limbs become flaccid, lose their elasticity, are 
no longer a place of confinement, but open for the es- 
cape of any thing that might have entered. The little 
black pismire is a common plunderer of this honey. 
It is a perplexing matter to reconcile our feelings to 
the rigor, and our reason to the necessity, of some 
plants being made the instrument of destruction to the 
insect world. Of British plants we have only a few so 
constructed, which, having clammy joints and calyxes, 
entangle them to death. The sun-dew (droserae) destroys 
in a different manner, yet kills them without torture. 
F 
