214 
PART III. -NATURAL HISTORY. 
ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
Article I. —Ohservatiom on a few of the Plants, which 
possess, or are supposed to possess, the power of Entrap¬ 
ping Insects. Ey Edward Murphy, Esq. Agent to the 
Horticultural and Arboricultural Societies of Ireland. 
Gentlemen, 
During my sojourn in the Botanic Garden, of Trinity College 
Dublin, where for some years I had the charge of the Exotic plants, I 
took particular pleasure in availing myself of the excellent opportunity 
which I enjoyed, of subjecting to the test of experiment, whatever I found 
recorded concerning the habits of the several plants; and especially with 
relation to the subject of this communication.—being of opinion, that 
much which is supposed to be known on this subject, rests on little more 
than mere conjecture; and with a view to direct the attention of others, 
to the elucidation of an interesting enquiry, I shall take the liberty of 
submitting to you, the result of the observations which I was enabled to 
make. 
And first, with respect to the Side-Saddle Flower, (Sarracenia,) a 
genus of plants, with which most gardeners are acquainted; but as many 
of the readers of a periodical, so generally interesting as the Horticultural 
Register, may not have seen any of the species, I annex a sketch of the 
leaf of one of them, the Sarracenia fiava. [fig. 26] There are four others 
enumerated in Sweet’s “Hortus Britannicus,” v\z. purpurea, rubra, vn- 
riolaris, and minor; all natives of the marshes of North America. Each 
leaf is a hollow cylinder, capable of containing water; the aperture at the 
extremity of the tube is furnished with a leafy appendage, which before 
the leaf reaches its full size, covers it so closely, as to exclude the rain 
and dews; at other times, the lid recedes from the aperture, and then 
the tube will generally be found to contain water, in which a number of 
dead and dying flies, may at all times be observed. This singular con¬ 
struction of the leaf, is evidently designed by Nature to retain moisture, 
for the purpose of supplying the plant in times of drought, but the late 
Sir J. E. Smith, having probably examined the plant when young, and 
observing that the aperture of S. adunca, [variolaris] was so completely 
closed as to exclude water, gave it as his opinion, that the tube must 
have been intended to serve some other purpose, and having stated on 
tlie authority of one of the young men, in the Liverpool Botanic Garden 
