Groom— On Dischidia rafflesiana ( Wall.). 227 
a goodly number of pitchers ; it frequently was rendered 
turbid by the amount of matter suspended in it. 
In the last case it is obvious that the pitchers contained 
a nutrient liquid, but the question remains to what extent, if 
any, this nutrient solution can be utilized by the plant. In order 
to prove that the roots inside the pitchers can absorb liquid, 
I made the following experiments on living plants. Two 
tolerably young pitchers were separately removed from the 
plant and the pitcher-roots of one of them were severed. The 
two isolated pitchers were then carefully filled with water 
and hung up in open air. Both pitchers remained for some 
days apparently unchanged : then the pitcher with the severed 
roots, showed signs of shrivelling and blanched slightly. 
Unfortunately my experiments could not be continued longer 
than a week, but they serve to illustrate the fact that the 
pitcher-roots can absorb water. Other facts tend to show 
that the solids in the pitcher are utilized by the roots. In the 
first place I found that the pitcher-roots possessed root-hairs : 
and clinging fast to the latter were particles of earth which 
adhered just as do fragments of soil to the root-hairs of 
terrestrial plants (Fig. 10). I frequently noticed that in empty 
pitchers the root-hairs were excessively short. In the second 
place the root-system was well developed in every pitcher 
rich in the solid substances referred to, though the converse 
was not true. In pitchers containing a quantity of solid 
matter, water was frequently absent, though I cannot in every 
case state that there had never been any water in these 
pitchers. But water cannot have been the sole, or even the 
principal, agent in inducing the strong development of the 
roots of the pitchers alluded to. For I found that when the 
solid contents were specially collected on one side of the 
pitcher the roots were in a corresponding manner more largely 
developed on that side. This one-sided distribution of solid 
matter was not confined to horizontally-placed pitchers, so it 
could not have been occasioned by the disposition of rain- 
cavity, although, doubtless, some must have been washed out during the voyage 
from Singapore. 
