the actual entrance of these minute creatures.”  They never come out, but soon perish in their prison, which receives a continued succession of victims, but little, if any, fresh air to the contained water.  The action of the trap is purely mechanical, without evident irritability in the opening or shutting.  There is no evidence nor much likelihood of proper digestion; indeed, Mr. Darwin found evidence to the contrary.  But the more or less decomposed and dissolved animal matter is doubtless absorbed into the plant; for the whole interior of the sac is lined with peculiar, elongated and four-armed very thin-walled processes, which contain active protoplasm, and which were proved by experiment to “have the power of absorbing matter from weak solutions of certain salts of ammonia and urea, and from a putrid infusion of raw meat.”

Although the bladderworts “prey on garbage,” their terrestrial relatives “live cleanly,” as nobler plants should do, and have a good and true digestion.  Pinguicula, or butterwort, is the representative of this family upon land.  It gets both its Latin and its English name from the fatty or greasy appearance of the upper face of its broad leaves; and this appearance is due to a dense coat or pile of short-stalked glands, which secrete a colorless and extremely viscid liquid.  By this small flies, or whatever may alight or fall upon the leaf, are held fast.  These waifs might be useless or even injurious to the plant.  Probably Mr. Darwin was the first to ask whether they might be of advantage.  He certainly was the first to show that they probably are so.  The evidence from experiment, shortly summed up, is, that insects alive or dead, and also other nitrogenous bodies, excite these glands to increased secretion; the secretion then becomes acid, and acquires the power of dissolving solid animal substances—­that is, the power of digestion in the manner of Drosera and Dionaea.  And the stalks of their glands under the microscope give the same ocular evidence of absorption.  The leaves of the butterwort are apt to have their margins folded inward, like a rim or hem.  Taking young and vigorous leaves to which hardly anything had yet adhered, and of which the margins were still flat, Mr. Darwin set within one margin a row of small flies.  Fifteen hours afterward this edge was neatly turned inward, partly covering the row of flies, and the surrounding glands were secreting copiously.  The other edge remained flat and unaltered.  Then he stuck a fly to the middle of the leaf just below its tip, and soon both margins infolded, so as to clasp the object.  Many other and varied experiments yielded similar results.  Even pollen, which would not rarely be lodged upon these leaves, as it falls from surrounding wind-fertilized plants, also small seeds, excited the same action, and showed signs of being acted upon.  “We may therefore conclude,” with Mr. Darwin, “that Pinguicula vulgaris, with its small roots, is not only supported to a large extent by the extraordinary number of insects which it habitually captures, but likewise draws some nourishment from the pollen, leaves, and seeds, of other plants which often adhere to its leaves.  It is, therefore, partly a vegetable as well as an animal feeder.”