1877.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
181 
a half dozen or more to a single flower. Each 
insect will be found securely fastened by its 
proboscis or trunk, in such a manner, that by 
all its exertions it can not free itself. The poor 
things beat themselves against the flower, dust- 
A cruel flower. —(Arauja Mens.) 
to judge by the way our plant (sent by Peter 
Henderson) behaved last summer, we are sure 
that it would prove a most efficient trap for 
both day and night flying insects; the flowers 
held the largest sphinxes, or humming-bird 
&2 owje<6<3&4-.' 
the dropwort. —{Spirted JUipendula.) 
so placed, that their spreading cells form a 
series of notches WW in a ring around the 
pistil. The insect, in putting its proboscis 
down for the honey, must pass it into one of 
these notches, and in attempting to withdraw 
ing it with the scales from their wings, and 
against one another, until from starvation or 
exhaustion they die a miserable death. We 
have given accounts of plants which catch in¬ 
sects, and feed upon them, and can see that 
this seeming cruelty is to a useful end—at least 
to the plant. Then there are other plants, 
which make use of insects to fertilize them, as 
Dr. Gray has clearly and abundantly shown. 
In this operation both plant and insect are 
benefited, though sometimes in doing this an 
insect fares badly; as the honey-bee, which, in 
fertilizing the Milkweed, gets its legs so loaded 
with the mass of pollen, that if it gets to the 
hive, it is unable to climb up the comb, and 
dies; yet even here the intention is good, 
though the bee overdoes his part of the work. 
But in our Arauja we can find no such excuse. 
The flower is not fertilized by these insects, 
nor does the plant consume them. The con¬ 
trivance for catching the moths and butterflies 
is as effective as if it had been designed for the 
special purpose, and to all appearance the plant 
is guilty of an act of unmitigated cruelty— 
catching and killing—no not even that—starv¬ 
ing to death, inoffensive insects, just for the fun 
of it. Certainly appearances are very much 
against the plant, and Arauja, being a “ barbar¬ 
ous name,” is properly applied. When the 
plant was in flower, we made a sketch of the 
mechanism of its trap, but it is unfortunately 
mislaid. Suffice it to say that the anthers are 
it, the end is sure to be caught in a notch— 
boot-jack fashion, as it were—and the more 
the insect pulls, the tighter its trunk is drawn 
towards the point of the notch. Whether the 
insect is unable to back down its flexible trunk, 
the only way it can get release, or does not 
think to do it, we can not say, but the fact that 
it doesn’t is very evident. As it is contrary to 
the natural order of things, for an insect or a 
plant to do an act, without subserving some 
good end, we do not think this to be an excep¬ 
tion. An examination of the flower shows it 
to be so constructed that it must be fertilized 
by some insect, evidently by one with a pro¬ 
boscis of a different kind from that of our 
moths and butterflies. No doubt in its native 
home the particular insect is abundant, and all 
goes on well. Human intervention disarranges 
the whole affair, and we set out the plant where 
our insects, unused to this style of flower, are 
attracted by its abundant honey, and are led to 
a miserable death, while the plant acquires a 
reputation for a cruelty, which it can not avoid. 
An English writer, a few years ago, wrote of 
the flower as “ diabolical,” for trapping insects 
just “for the fun of covering itself with bor¬ 
rowed plumage.” There is one compensation 
for this evil; a French writer has suggested 
that the plant may be turned to excellent ac¬ 
count by the entomologist, by making it do the 
“bug-catching;” this is a capital idea, which 
we commend to our entomological friends, for 
moths, as well as those so small, that their pro¬ 
boscis barely reached the bottom of the flower. 
The Dropwort. —{Spiraea filipendula.) 
The genus Spiraea is one of the few which 
furnish to our gardens both woody and herba¬ 
ceous plants; indeed, the shrubby Spiraeas are 
so common, that many persons are surprised to 
learn that the Dropwort, and some of its rela¬ 
tives, belong with them. The Dropwort is a 
native of Europe, where in its single form it is 
a common plant, and though that is sometimes 
cultivated, it is far inferior to the double-flow¬ 
ered variety, the one of which we give an en¬ 
graving, aod which we consider one of the 
most useful of our border plants. The leaves 
form a dense rosette close to the ground, and 
are cut and toothed into very fine divisions. 
The engraving in this respect does not give a 
correct idea of the foliage, as in order to repre¬ 
sent more distinctly the shape of the individual 
leaves, only a few are shown, while in reality 
they are so numerous as to form a thick mat, 
a foot or more across. The flower-stems arise 
from the center of this cluster, are nearly 
naked, in the single plant often two feet high, 
and in the double about a foot, and bear at the 
summit an open cluster of white flowers, which 
are sometimes tinged on the outside with pink. 
The double flowers are exceedingly double, the 
