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Show 302 .DARWINIANA. North America, growing in bogs or low ground, so that they cannot be supposed to need the water as such. Indeed, they secrete a part i£ not all of it. The commonest species, and the only one at · the North, which ranges from Newfoundland to Florida, has a broadmouthed pitcher with an upright lid, into which rain must needs fall more or less. The yellow Sarracenia, with long tubular leaves, called "trumpets" in the Southern States, has an arching or partly upright lid, raised well above the orifice, so that some water may rain in; but a portion is certainly secreted there, and may be seen bedewing the sides and collected at the bottom before the mouth opens. In other species, the orifice is so completely overarched as essentially to prevent the access of water from without. In these tubes, mainly in the water, flies and other insects accumulate, perish, and decompose. Flies thrown into the open-mouthed tube of the yellow Sarracenia, even when free from water, are unable to get out-one hardly sees why, except that they cannot fly directly upward ; and microscopic chevaux-de-frise of fine, sharp-pointed bristles which line most of the interior, pointing strictly downward, may be a more effectual obstacle to crawling up the sides than one would think possible. On the inside of the lid or hood of the purple Northern species, the bristles are much stronger; but an insect might escape by the front without encountering these. In this species, the pitchers, however are so well supplied with water that the insects w hi~h somehow are most abundantly attracted thither are effectually drowned, and the contents all summer long are in the condition of a rich liquid manure . . INSECTIVOROUS PLANTS. 303 That the tubes or pitchers of the Southern species are equally attractive and fatal to :flies is well known. Indeed, they are said to be taken into houses and used as fly-traps. There is no perceptible odor to draw insects, except what arises from the decomposition of macerated victims; nor is any kind of lure to be detected at the mouth of the pitcher of the common purple-flowered species. Some incredulity was therefore natural when it was stated by a Carolinian correspondent (Mr. B. F. Grady) that in the long-leaved, yellow-flowered species the lid just above the mouth of the tubular pitcher habitually secretes drops of a sweet and viscid liquid, which attracts flies and apparently intoxicates them, since those that sip it soon become unsteady in gait and mostly fall irretrievably into the well beneath. But upon cultivating plants of this species, obtained for the purpose, the existence of this lure was abundantly verified; and, although we cannot vouch for its inebriating quality, we can no longer regard it as unlikely. No sooner was it thus ascertained that at least one species of Sarracenia allures flies to their ruin than it began to appear that-just as in the case of Droseramost of this was a m~re revival of obsolete knowledge. The "insect-destroying process" was known and well described sixty years ago, the part played by the sweet exudation indicated, and even the intoxication perhaps hinted at, although evidently little thought of in those ante-temperance days. Dr. James Macbride, of South Carolina-the early associate of Elliott in his " Botany of South Carolina and Georgia," and to whose death, at the age of thirty-three, cutting short |