154 
SURVEY OF THE INTERTROPICAL 
1822. this occasion he was more fortunate, for he found 
Jan. 5. it in the greatest profusion in the vicinity of 
the stream that empties itself over the beach of 
the outer bay where we watered. Of this he 
says— The plants of cephalotus were all in a 
very weak state, and none in any stage of fructi- 
fication: the ascidia, or pitchers, which are in- 
serted on strong foot-stalks, and intermixed about 
the root with the leaves, all contained a quantity 
of discoloured water, and, in some, the drowned 
bodies of ants and other small insects. Whether 
this fluid can be considered a secretion of the 
plant, as appears really to be the fact with refer- 
ence to the nepenthes, or pitcher-plant of India*, 
deposited by it through its vessels into the 
pitchers ; or even a secretion of the ascidia them- 
selves ; or, whether it is not simply rain-water 
lodged in these reservoirs, as a provision from 
which the plant might derive support in seasons 
of protracted drought, when those marshy lands 
(in which this vegetable is alone to be found) 
are partially dried of the moisture, that is in- 
dispensable to its existence, may perhaps be 
presumed by the following observations. The 
opercula, shaped like some species of oyster, or 
escalop- shells, I found in some pitchers to be very 
closely shut upon their orifices, although their 
♦ Smith’s Introd. to Botany, p. 150. 
