156 Mar loth. — Some recent Observations 
unwelcome lodger by offering him some special tit-bits in its 
flowers, securing in this way, with the aid of some specially 
developed contrivances, the cross-fertilization of its flowers. It 
is hardly possible to imagine a more complicated relationship 
of plants and animals. 
There is another peculiarity of R. dentata which deserves 
special attention. All other Droseraceous plants occur in 
swampy or wet places, and the annuals are found in localities 
which are moist during certain seasons of the year. The 
locality, however, where I found R. dentata was the dry slope 
of a hill, which consisted of hard iron gravel and clay. No 
other hydrophilous plants were to be seen. The unusual 
nature of the locality induced me to dig up several plants and 
to take a sample of the soil from the lowest layer into which 
its roots had penetrated. I put the sample at once into a well- 
corked tube and analysed it later on. It contained only 174 
per cent, of moisture (expelled at 120° C.), and the loss by 
ignition, which represents the combustible matter and the 
chemically bound water, amounted only to 3*11 per cent. As 
the young plants as well as the larger shrubs possess a com- 
paratively small root-system, and as the amount of moisture 
in the soil is hardly sufficient for strictly xerophilous plants, 
it is surprising that a shrub which belongs to a typically 
hygrophilous order should be able to exist in such a 
locality. 
The locality in which I found R. Gorgonias , however, was 
of the usual nature, consisting of moist sandy soil, on which, 
among other plants, a species of Drosera , viz. D. cuneifolia , 
grew. 
Dr. Purcell has drawn my attention to an article by 
R. I. Pocock, published in 1898 in Nature 1 , from notes sup- 
plied by Mr. A. Everett. 
This gentlemen has observed that a species of Nepenthes in 
North Borneo is often inhabited by another crab-spider, viz. 
Misumena nepenthicola. This spider plunges boldly into the 
fluid of the pitchers whenever threatened by danger, and it is 
1 Nature, vol. Iviii, 1898, p. 275. 
