There remains one more mode in which plants of the higher grade are known to prey upon animals; namely, by means of pitchers, urns, or tubes, in which insects and the like are drowned or confined, and either macerated or digested.  To this Mr. Darwin barely alludes on the last page of the present volume.  The main facts known respecting the American pitcher-plants have, as was natural, been ascertained in this country; and we gave an abstract, two years ago, of our then incipient knowledge.  Much has been learned since, although all the observations have been of a desultory character.  If space permitted, an instructive narrative might be drawn up, as well of the economy of the Sarracenias as of how we came to know what we do of it.  But the very little we have room for will be strictly supplementary to our former article.

The pitchers of our familiar Northern Sarracenia, which is likewise Southern, are open-mouthed; and, although they certainly secrete some liquid when young, must derive most of the water they ordinarily contain from rain.  How insects are attracted is unknown, but the water abounds with their drowned bodies and decomposing remains.

In the more southern S. flava, the long and trumpet-shaped pitchers evidently depend upon the liquid which they themselves secrete, although at maturity, when the hood becomes erect, rain may somewhat add to it.  This species, as we know, allures insects by a peculiar sweet exudation within the orifice; they fall in and perish, though seldom by drowning, yet few are able to escape; and their decomposing remains accumulate in the narrow bottom of the vessel.  Two other long-tubed species of the Southern States are similar in these respects.  There is another, S. psittacina, the parrot-headed species, remarkable for the cowl-shaped hood so completely inflexed over the mouth of the small pitcher that no rain can possibly enter.  Little is known, however, of the efficiency of this species as a fly-catcher; but its conformation has a morphological interest, leading up, as it does, to the Californian type of pitcher presently to be mentioned.

But the remaining species, S. variolaris, is the most wonderful of our pitcher-plants in its adaptations for the capture of insects.  The inflated and mottled lid or hood overarches the ample orifice of the tubular pitcher sufficiently to ward off the rain, but not to obstruct the free access of flying insects.  Flies, ants, and most insects, glide and fall from the treacherous smooth throat into the deep well below, and never escape.  They are allured by a sweet secretion just within the orifice—­ which was discovered and described long ago, and the knowledge of it wellnigh forgotten until recently.  And, finally, Dr. Mellichamp, of South Carolina, two years ago made the capital discovery that, during the height of the season, this lure extends from the orifice down nearly to the ground, a length of a foot or two, in the form of a honeyed line or narrow trail on the