VENUS FLY-TRAP. 
137 
tarium, seated at the bottom of the flower-cup, and 
guarded by five converging anthers, invites the fly 
to enter and enjoy the sweets ; but when the little 
animal inserts his proboscis between the anthers to 
arrive at the honey, they close with violence and 
detain him prisoner. Dr. Darwin was shown a fly 
thus held fast by the end of its proboscis, which, he 
tells us, in vain struggled to disengage itself, till the 
converging anthers were separated with a pin. The 
gentleman to whom the doctor was indebted for the 
sight of this curiosity, had the plant growing in his 
garden, and on some days observed that almost 
every flower had entrapped a fly. He thus men- 
tions the plant in some observations which he after- 
wards sent to Dr. Darwin : 
“ My apocynum is not yet out of flower. I have 
often visited it, and have frequently found four or 
five flies, some alive, and some dead, in its flowers; 
they are generally caught by the trunk Or proboscis, 
sometimes by the trunk and a leg: I don’t know 
that this plant sleeps, as the flowers remain open in 
the night ; yet the flies frequently make their es- 
cape. In a plant of Mr. Ordoyno’s, an ingenious 
gardener at Newark, who is possessed of a great col- 
lection of plants, I saw many flowers of an apocy- 
num with three dead flies in each : they are a thin- 
bodied fly, and rather less than the common house 
fly ; but I have seen two or three other sorts of flies 
thus arrested by the plant.” 
