HOW CERTAIN PLANTS CAPTURE INSECTS. 
41 
CHAPTER III. 
HOW CERTAIN PLANTS CAPTURE INSECTS. 
86. This is not a common habit of plants. Insects are fed and allowed to depart 
unharmed. When captures are made they must sometimes be purely accidental 
and meaningless ; as in those species of Silene called Catch-fly, because small flies 
and other weak insects, sticking fast to a clammy exudation of the calyxes in 
some species, of a part of the stem in others, are unable to extricate themselves 
and so perish. But in certain cases insects are caught in ways so remarkable that 
we cannot avoid regarding them as contrivances, as genuine flytraps. 
87. Flower-Flytraps are certainly to be found in some plants of the Orchis 
Family. One instance is that of Cypripedium or Lady’s-Slipper, which, being a 
contrivance for cross-fertilization, is described in the foregoing chapter (paragraph 
62). Here the insect is entrapped for the purpose of securing its services; 
and the detention is only temporary. If jt did not 
escape from one flower to enter into another, the 
whole purpose of the contrivance would be defeated. 
Not so, however, in 
88. Leaf-Flytraps. These all take the insect’s life, 
— whether with intent or not it may be difficult 
to make out. The commonest and the most ambig- 
uous leaf-flytraps are 
89. Such as Pitchers, of which those of our Sarra- 
cenia or Sidesaddle-flower are most familiar. Fig. 37 
represents one leaf, and a section of another, of the 
species most common in our bogs, especially at the 
North ; and the vignette title-page, at bottom on 
the right hand, shows the longer and more tubular 
pitchers of another species of the Southern States. 
S. flava, a common yellow-flowered species from 
Virginia southward, has them so very long and ^'fnfa 7 pu 1 ^, 
