PECULIARITIES OF PLANTS. 
dant, and thus the Drosera is made an instrument of destruction use¬ 
less to itself, hut subservient to the general good. There is also 
something peculiar in the time and manner of the flowering of this 
genus, for few of the species are ever observed with their flowers ex¬ 
panded, and some persons have concluded, that they either never pro¬ 
perly expanded, or that their expansion took place at sunrise, and 
they quickly closed again; or that it occurred at night. The fact is, 
they open about ten o’clock in the morning, and generally are closing 
about twelve. The usual flowering time is July, when they may be 
found in most of our marshes. The leaves have a very novel appear¬ 
ance under a microscope;—their loose cellular tissue glistening like 
gold, the fine long scarlet hair, tipped with a crimson knob, from which 
there exudes a clear white liquid, which on being touched with the 
finger will draw out into a transparent thread more than an inch long, 
are all seen to very great advantage. Their medicinal properties ap¬ 
pear to be very trifling, for the most part they are acrid and poisonous. 
But sometimes the irritability wholly resides in the flower. This is 
the case with the common Berberry bush. The manner in which 
the stamens are spread out renders them incapable, without some as¬ 
sistance, of casting their pollen on the head of the stigma. When 
an insect enters the flower in search of honey, and its legs or body 
touch the inner part of each filament near the bottom, which it cannot 
well avoid, the filaments immediately contract, each of them bending 
over strikes its head against the top of the stigma, where it deposits 
the pollen, and by this means imprisons the insect. Its confinement 
however, is seldom of long continuance, for after a time some degree 
of exhaustion appears to take place, and the stamens become partially 
flaccid, of which the insect generally takes advantage and makes its 
escape. After this, they fall back to their usual situation, and shortly 
recover their irritability, which continues not merely whilst the an¬ 
thers are discharging the pollen, but extends more or less beyond even 
the falling of the corolla. No remarkable movement of the stamina 
takes place, on touching any other part of them than the inner part 
of each near the bottom. The stamen of Opuntia Tuna, a South 
American plant, introduced in 1731, is endued with a similar irrita¬ 
bility, but the stamina do not form so compact a prison, as Berberis. 
Another plant, the produce of our British woods, presents also a very 
curious structure ;—the Aristolochia Clematitis. Of this plant, which 
is so curiouslv formed, Professor Wildenow asserts, that the anthers 
of themselves cannot impregnate the stigma. The throat of the 
flower is lined with thick hair or bristles, pointing downwards, so as 
to form a funnel similar to the entrance into a wire mousetrap. The 
