44 
HOW CERTAIN PLANTS CAPTURE INSECTS. 
fly-catching. Moreover, in one of our species with longer leaves (. D . longifolia) 
the blade of the leaf itself incurves (as an intelligent lady has observed), so as to 
fold round its victim ! ' 
96. Another and a most practised observer, whose observations are not yet pub- 
lished, declares that the leaves of the common Round-leaved Sundew act differ- 
ently when different objects are placed upon them. For instance, if a particle of. 
raw meat be substituted for the living fly, the bristles will close upon it in the 
same manner ; but to a particle of chalk or wood they remain nearly indifferent. 
If any doubt should still remain whether the fly-catching in Sundews is acciden- 
tal or intentional, — in other words, whether the leaf is so constructed and ar- 
ranged in order that it may capture flies, — the doubt may perhaps disappear 
upon the contemplation of another and even more extraordinary plant of the 
same family with the Sundew, namely, 
97. Venus’s Flytrap, or Dion^a muscipula. This plant abounds in the low savan- 
nas around Wilmington, North Carolina, and is native nowhere else. It is not 
very difficult to cultivate, at least for a time, and it is kept in many choice con- 
servatories as a vegetable wonder. 
98. The trap is the end of the leaf (see Figs. 39, 
40). It is somewhat like the leaf of Sundew, only 
larger, about an inch in diameter, with bristles still 
stouter, but only round the margin, like a fringe, and 
no clammy liquid or gland at their tips. The leaf 
folds on itself as if hinged at the midrib. Three 
more delicate bristles are seen on the face upon close 
inspection. When these are touched by the finger or 
the point of a pencil, the open trap shuts with a 
quick motion, and after a considerable interval it 
reopens. When a fly or other insect alights on the 
surface and brushes against these sensitive bristles, 
the trap closes promptly, generally imprisoning the 
intruder. It closes at first with the sides convex and 
the bristles crossing each other like the fingers of in- 
terlocked hands or the teeth of a steel-trap, as in the 
side figures of Fig. 39. But soon the sides of the 
trap flatten down and press firmly upon the victim ; and it now requires a very 
nus’s Flytrap, the trap of the 
larger one wide open. 
