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NATURE STUDY. 
Organotopic Plants. IV. 
BY FREDERICK W. BATCHEEDER. 
One of the most remarkable phenomena in the natural 
world is the invasion of the animal kingdom by certain veg¬ 
etables and of the vegetable kingdom by certain animals. 
There are animals of low organization which possess chlo¬ 
rophyll and are thereby enabled to live without feeding. 
Tike plants, they decompose carbon dioxide and form 
starch in sunlight, and are so far trespassers into the ani¬ 
mal kingdom. They may be called vegetating animals. 
On the other hand, there are plants of comparatively high 
organization which feed and digest like animals, and are 
so far trespassers into the animal kingdom. All the organ¬ 
otopic or dependent plants show a tendency in this direc¬ 
tion, but the group now to be considered marks the ex¬ 
treme of deviation from the normal. These are the so- 
called insectivorous plants, better called carnivorous plants, 
since their diet is not restricted to members of the insect 
world. To the borrowing propensities of the other organ¬ 
otopic plants they have added the extraordina^ habit of 
catching, eating and digesting animal food, thus increas¬ 
ing largely the supply of nitrogenous material at their com¬ 
mand. The manner in which they accomplish this end, 
as well as the proportion of animal food to the total amount 
of food consumed, varies greatly in the different orders of 
plants concerned. 
The plants of this group are not very familiar objects, 
being most abundant in localities which are difficult of ac¬ 
cess. They all inhabit bogs and marshes, for their habit 
of copious secretion demands abundance of water. The 
person who cares to study them in their natural habitat 
must brave wet meadows and tangly swamp and quaking 
bog. Occasionally when a road has been put through 
some such ground there may be found a few plants easy of 
