42 
HOW CERTAIN PLANTS CAPTURE INSECTS. 
narrow, that they are popularly named Trumpets, In these pitchers or tubes 
water is generally found, sometimes caught from rain, but in other cases evi- 
dently furnished by the plant, the pitcher being so constructed that water can- 
not rain in : this water abounds with drowned insects, commonly in all stages of 
decay. One would suppose that insects which have crawled into the pitcher 
might as readily crawl out ; but they do not, and closer examination shows that 
escaping is not as easy as entering. In most pitchers of this sort there are sharp 
and stiff hairs within, all pointing downward, which offer considerable obstruction 
to returning, but none to entering. 
90. Why plants which are rooted in wet bogs or in moist ground need to catch 
water in pitchers, or to secrete it there, is a mystery, unless it is wanted to drown 
flies in. And what they gain from a solution of dead flies is equally hard to 
guess, unless this acts as a liquid manure. 
91. Into such pitchers as the common one represented in Fig. 37 rain may 
fall ; but not readily into such as those of the vignette title already referred to, — 
not at all into those of the Parrot-headed species, S. psit- 
tacina of the Southern States, for the inflated lid or cover 
arches over the mouth of the pitcher completely. This 
is even more strikingly so in Darlingtonia , the curious 
Californian Pitcher-plant lately made known and culti- 
vated : in this the contracted entrance to the pitcher is 
concealed under the hood and looks downward instead of 
upward ; and even the small chance of any rain entering 
by aid of the wind is, as it were, guarded against by a 
curious appendage, resembling the forked tail of some 
fish, which hangs over the front. Any water found in 
this pitcher must come from the plant itself. So it also 
must in the combined 
92. Pitcher and Tendril of Nepenthes. These Pitcher- 
plants are woody climbers, natives of the Indian Archi- 
pelago, and not rarely cultivated in hot-houses, as a curi- 
osity. One is shown on the vignette title, right-hand 
side, and their way of climbing is mentioned in the foregoing chapter (19). Some 
leaves lengthen the tip into the tendril only ; some of the lower bear a pitcher 
only ; but the best developed leaves have both, — the tendril for climbing, the 
