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CHAPTER XX. 
Plate XXXVIII. — the dion-ea muscipula. 
The dioncBa muscipula , or Venus’s fly-trap. Some parts of this 
plant are so remarkable as to deserve a particular description. It is 
a native of North Carolina; the root perennial; leaves all radical, 
supported on long fleshy and strongly veined footstalks, leaving a 
small portion of this next the leaf naked: the leaf itself consists of 
two semi-oval lobes jointed'at the back, so as to allow them to fold 
close together; they are fleshy, and when viewed through a lenss 
glandular, sometimes of a reddish color on the upper surface; the 
sides of both lobes are furnished with a row of cartilaginous cilice 
which stand nearly at right angles with the surface of the leaf, and 
b)ck into each other when they close. Near the middle of each lobe 
are three small spines, which are supposed to assist in destroying 
the entrapped insect. In warm weather the lobes are fully expanded 
and highly irritable, and if a fly or other insect at this time light 
upon them they suddenly close, and the poor animal is imprisoned 
till it dies. See Curtis’s Rotanical Magazine, No. 785. 
