plant will, in most cases, kill it outright, and will always bring about a suspension of all visible life-phenomena.

While the large majority of living beings are organized, or composed of different parts, called organs, which sustain certain relations with one another, and which discharge different offices, yet it must not therefore be concluded that organization is a necessary accompaniment of vitality, or that all living creatures are organized. Innumerous low forms of life, so low that they occupy the very lowest place in the scale of animated existences, absolutely exhibit no visible structure, and cannot, therefore, be said to be organized, but they, nevertheless, discharge all their vital functions just as well as though they possessed special organs for the purpose. Concluding our theme, we are forced to admit that animals are organized, or possess structure, because they are alive, and not that they live because they are organized. By carefully comparing the morphological and physiological differences between different animals and plants, naturalists have divided the entire animal and vegetable kingdoms into a number of divisions, whose leading characteristics may be found in almost every text-book. All that we promised ourselves when this work was first thought of was a brief treatment of a few of the most interesting life-forms of this planet of ours in the light of their ways and doings, and the direction of human thought to those traits of character and manifestations of conscious intelligence which fit them to become partakers with man of that new life which awaits him beyond the grave.

PLANTS THAT FEED ON INSECTS.

PERHAPS it would be difficult to find in the whole

range of vegetable creation anything more curious than the carnivorous or flesh-eating plants. That animals eat plants creates in us no emotion of curiosity, for this is the common law of nature. But that plants should devour animals is a marvel to which few minds uninitiated in science would give credence. Though these strange forms of vegetable life have been known for about a century, yet it has been but a few years since the attention of naturalists was first specially called to their habits and character. No one has probably done more to explain the life and operations of the flesh-eating plants than Mr. Darwin.

For centuries strange rumors had been circulated of the existence of huge plants in the more remote and unvisited parts of Asia which would imprison and destroy large animals and men that would venture within reach of their great quivering leaves armed with hooked spines, the flesh of the dead victim being absorbed into their structure, but all these giant flesh-eating trees or plants have so far proved to be mere myths. Science has discovered, however, that there is some foundation for these exciting fictions, and it has not been obliged to go to the distant East to find it, for flesheating plants are by no means uncommon in this country and Europe. But these plants confine their destructive propensities to the crawling and flying insects which are beguiled by some tempting reward to rest on their leaves. Such a strange provision of nature is no less interesting than if these plants had the power to destroy the larger animals, for it is

the fact itself which startles the attention by its seeming reversal of natural laws.

No better example of carnivorous plants could be taken than Dionea muscipula, or to use the common name, Venus's Fly-trap. It is a species that is indigenous to North Carolina and the adjacent parts of South Carolina, affecting sandy bogs in the pine forests from April to June, and a representative of the Droseracea, or Sundew Family. One cannot fail after once seeing it of becoming impressed with its peculiar characteristics. It is a smooth perennial herb with tufted radical leaves on broadly-winged, spatulate stems, the limb orbicular, notched at both ends, and fringed on the margins with strong bristles. From the centre of the rosette of leaves proceeds at the proper time a scape or leafless stalk which terminates in an umbel-like cyme of from eight to ten white bracted flowers, each flower being one inch in diameter. The roots are small and consist of two branches each an inch in length springing from a bulbous enlargement. Like an epiphytic orchid, these plants can be grown in well-drained damp moss without any soil, thus showing that the roots probably serve for the absorption of water solely. Three minute pointed processes or filaments, placed triangularly, project from the upper surface of each lobe of the bi-lobed leaf, although cases are observed where four and even ten filaments are found. These filaments are remarkable for their extreme sensitiveness to touch, as shown not only by their own movement, but by that of the lobes also. Sharp, rigid projections, diminutive spikes as it were, stand out from the leaf-margins, each of which being entered by a bundle of spiral vessels. They are so arranged that when the lobes close they interlock like the teeth of an oldfashioned rat-trap. That considerable strength may be had, the mid-rib of the leaf, on the lower side, is quite largely developed.

Minute glands, of a reddish or purplish color, thickly cover the upper surface of the leaf, excepting towards the margins,

the rest of the leaf being green. No glands are found upon the spikes or upon the foliaceous footstalk. From twenty to thirty polygonal cells, filled with purple fluid, constitute each gland. They are convex above, somewhat flattened underneath, and stand on very short pedicels, into which spiral vessels do not enter. They have the power of secretion under certain influences, and also that of absorption. Minute octofid projections, of a reddish-brown color, are scattered in considerable numbers over the footstalk, the backs of the leaves and the spikes, with a few on the upper surfaces of the lobes.

The sensitive filaments, which are a little more than onetwentieth of an inch in length, and thin, delicate and tapering to a point, are formed of several rows of elongated cells, filled with a purplish fluid. They are sometimes bifid or even trifid at the apex, and towards the base there is a constriction formed of broader cells, and beneath the constriction an articulation, supported on an enlarged base, consisting of differently shaped polygonal cells. As the filaments project at right angles to the surface of the leaf, they would have been in danger of being broken off whenever the lobes closed together had it not been for the articulation, which allows them to bend flat down. So exquisitely sensitive are these filaments, from their tips to their bases, to a momentary touch, that it is hardly possible to touch them even so lightly or quickly with any hard object without causing the lobes to close, but a piece of delicate human hair, two and a-half inches in length, held dangling over a filament so as to touch it, or pinches of fine wheaten flour, dropped from a height, produce no effect. Though not glandular, and hence incapable of secretion, yet the filaments by their sensitiveness to a momentary touch, which is followed by the rapid closure of the lobes of the leaf, assure to Dionæa the necessary supply of insect food for all its wants.

Inorganic bodies, even of large size, such as bits of stone, glass and such like, or organic bodies not containing

No

nitrogeneous matter in a soluble condition, as bits of cork, wood, moss for examples, or bodies containing soluble nitrogeneous matter, if perfectly dry, such as small pieces of meat, albumen, gelatine, etc., may be long left on the lobes, and no movement is excited. But when nitrogeneous organic bodies, which are all damp, are left on the lobes, the result is widely different, for these then close by a slow and gradual movement and not in a rapid manner as when one of the sensitive filaments is touched by a hard substance. Small purplish, almost sessile glands, as has already been stated, thickly cover the upper surface of the lobes. These have the power both of secretion and absorption, but they do not secrete until excited by the absorption of nitrogeneous matter. other excitement, as far as experiments show, produces this effect. When the lobes are made to close over a bit of meat or an insect, the glands over the entire surface of the leaf emit a copious discharge, as in this case the glands on both sides are pressed against the meat or insect, the secretion being twice as great as when the one or the other is laid on the surface of a single lobe; and as the two lobes come into almost close contact the secretion, containing dissolved animal matter, diffuses itself by capillary attraction, causing fresh glands on both sides to begin secreting in a continually widening circle. The secretion is almost colorless, slightly mucilaginous, moderately acid, and so copious at times in the furrow over the mid-rib as to trickle down to the earth. But all this secretion is for the purposes of digestion. Be the animal matter which the enclosed object yields ever so little, it serves as a peptogene, and the glands on the surface of the leaf pour forth their acid discharge, which acts like the gastric juice of animals.

Now as to the manner in which insects are caught by the leaves of Dionea muscipula. In its native country they are caught in large numbers, but whether they are attracted in any special way no one seems to know. Both lobes close with astonishing quickness as soon as a filament is touched,