146 
NATURE STUDY. 
All these things indicated that there might be some de¬ 
sign, so far as design may be attributed to plants, in these 
several arrangements. The movements of entrapped ani¬ 
mals were watched, and it was found that they died soon 
after entering the bladder, apparently asphyxiated from 
the lack of oxygen in the enclosed water. One observer 
records that a small crustacean on entering, would at once 
manifest alarm by drawing in its feet and antennae and 
closing its shell, probably feeling that he had got into un¬ 
healthy quarters. In fact, one animal after another gets 
in and stays ; stays because he has to ; and so the animal 
accumulation increases and may in the end nearly or quite 
fill the bladder. As many as a dozen small crustaceans 
have been found in a single bladder. There are also some¬ 
times found small worms, insects and larvae. 
The plant having thus secured its prey, what disposal 
does it make of it ? It cannot expel it, and it cannot di¬ 
gest it. Examination of the inner surface of the bladder 
shows that it is covered with four-pointed processes, or 
hairs, of a kind which possess in a high degree the power 
of absorption. These hairs, then, correspond with the di¬ 
gesting apparatus of Drosera, and enable the plant to as¬ 
similate the products of the decay of animal substance 
which goes on within the bladder. So the bladderworts 
get their supply of nitrogenous material at second hand, 
something as a patient, temporarily deprived of his diges¬ 
tive apparatus, might be kept a-going by baths in lobster 
bisque ! 
The terrestrial species sometimes have a few bladders on 
the rootlets, or on creeping and rooting shoots ; otherwise 
they appear to be rather saprophytic than insectivorous. 
The pitcher plants (Sarracenia) are more familiar ob¬ 
jects than either the sundews or the bladderworts, being of 
good size and growing in almost any moist bog or swamp. 
