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Show 330 DARWINIAN A. syveet trail was known, it was remarkeu by the late Prof. Wyman and others that the pitchers of this species, in the savannahs of Georgia and Florida, contain far more ants than they do of all other insects put together. Finally, all this is essentially repeated in the peculiar Californian pitcher-plant (Darlingtonia), a genus of the same natural family, which captures insects in great variety, enticing them by a sweetish secretion over the whole inside of the inflated hood and that of a c1,1rious forked appendage, resembling a fish-tail, which overhangs the orifice. This orifice is so concealed that it can be seen and approached only from below, as if-the casual observer might infer-to escape visitation. But dead insects of all kinds, and their decomposing remains, crowd the cavity and saturate the liquid therein contained, enticed, it is said, by a peculiar odor, as well as by the sweet lure which is at some stages so abundant as to drip from the tips of the overhanging appendage. The principal observations upon this pitcher-plant in its native habitat have been made by Mrs. Austin, and only some of the earlier ones have thus far been published by Mr: Canby. But we are assured that in this, as in the Sarracenia variolaris, the sweet exudation extends at the proper season from the orifice down, the wing nearly to the ground, ·and that ants follow this honeyed pathway to their destruction. Also, that the watery liquid in the pitcher, which must be wholly a secretion, is much increased in quantity after the capture of insects. It cannot now well be doubted that the animal matter is utilized by the plant in all these cases, al- INSECTIVOROUS AND CLIMBING PLANTS. 331 though most probably only after maceration or decomposition. In some of them even digestion, or at least the absorption of undecomposed soluble animal juices, may be suspected; but there is no proof of it. But, if pitchers of the Sarracenia family are only macerating vessels, those of Nepenthes- the pitchers of the Indian Archipelago, familiar in conservatories- seem to be stomachs. The investigations of the President of the Royal Society, Dr. Hooke~, although incomplete, wellnigh demonstrate that these not .only allure insects by a sweet secretion at the rim and upon the lid of the cup, but also that their capture, or the presence of other partly soluble animal matter, produces an increase. and an acidulation <>f the contained watery liquid, which thereupon becomes capable of acting in the manner of that of .Drosera and Dionma, dissolving flesh, albumen, and the like. After all, there never was just ground for denying to vegetables the use of animal food. The fungi are by far the most numerous family of plants, and they .all live upon organic matter, some upon dead and decomposing, some upon living, some upon both; and the number of those that feed upon living animals is large. Whether these carnivorous propensities of higher plants which so excite our wonder be regarded as survivals of ancestral habits, or as comparatively late acquirements, or even as special endowments, in any case what we have now learned of them goes to strengthen the conclusion that the whole organic world is akin. The v9lume upon " The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants" is a revised and enlarged edition |
