CIIL— THE SUNDEWS. 
Drosera rotmuiifolia Linne, D. longifoHa Linne, and D. anglica Hudson. 
I T is with considerable hesitation that we follow Engler in uniting in the one 
Order Sarraceniales the three Families Droserace^^ Sarraceniaceie, and Nepenthace^e. 
The structural characters they have in common are but few. They are herbs with 
scattered leaves ; polysymmetric, more or less whorled floral organs ; five or fewer 
united carpels ; and numerous small albuminous seeds. Obviously, the insectivorous 
adaptations of their foliage have had great weight in determining their collocation ; 
but such physiological considerations are a most unsafe clue to affinity. Linnaeus’s 
botanical instinct, we feel convinced, led him correctly in placing the Side-saddle 
plants of North America near the Poppies and Water-lilies ; while it is doubtful 
whether the insertion of the petals and stamens in the Sundews should be considered 
as hypogynous or as perigynous, and many characters suggest their near affinity to 
the Saxifragace<€ or to their near kin the Australian Pitcher-plants or Cephalotace^. 
The Family Droserace^ comprises rather more than a hundred species in six 
genera. Geographically, these are curiously wide in their distribution ; and, as all 
of them are insectivorous and most of them are inhabitants of poor boggy ground, 
it would seem as if their special means of obtaining organic food have enabled them 
to spread to situations for which there is comparatively little competition. In all of 
them the root-system is but very slightly developed, whilst all the leaves are 
modified for insectivorous purposes, being furnished with glands excreting a 
digestive fluid and absorbing the peptones formed by its action. In the Australian 
genus Byblis, in which there are two species, the leaves and flower-stalks bear two 
kinds of simple glands with a viscid excretion, some stalked, some sessile. 
The pinnately-lobed leaves of the two species of the shrubby South African 
genus Roridula bear somewhat more complex glandular hairs of varying length. 
The only species of the genus Drosophyllum, D. lusitanicum Link, is a native 
of Morocco, Southern Spain, and Portugal, and its long narrow leaves bear two 
kinds of glands, stalked ones with an acid excretion, and sessile ones which do not 
excrete until stimulated by nitrogenous matter, when they pour out a fluid 
containing a digestive ferment. Both kinds of glands absorb liquid organic matter. 
In none of these three genera is any movement exhibited by the glandular hairs. 
The genus Drosera includes some ninety species, more than forty of which are 
Australian, while others occur in Madagascar, India, South Africa, and America 
from Canada to Tierra del Fuego, and the three British species, all of which are 
here figured, have wide distributional areas chiefly in the Northern Hemisphere. 
The blades of the leaves, which vary in form in the various species, are surrounded 
and covered with “ emergences ” or lobes into which simple veins extend, while 
they terminate in viscid glands. For these structures, differing as they do from 
mere hairs by containing vessels, Darwin proposed the name tentacle. The sticky 
