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Never a word of criticism of his impeccable friends! Then there is his botany. He makes believe that all the vegetable kingdom is mystically perfect and exemplary, that all flowers smell deliciously and are exquisitely beautiful, that Drosera does not hurt flies very much, and that onions do not smell. Most of the universe does not interest this nature lover at all.
P. 411. in the Dypsacus is another contrivance for this purpose, a bason of water is placed round each joint of the stem. In the Drosera is another kind of fly-trap. See Dypsacus and Drosera; the flowers of Siléne and Cucúbalus are closed all day, but are open and give an agreeable odour in the night. See Cerea. Formosissima. Most beautiful Amaryllis. Six males, one female.
The open lawns were adorned by various plants, amongst which we noticed a species of Drosera, with white and red blossoms? a Mitrasacme; a narrow-leaved Ruellia, the white primrose, the red prostrate malvaceous plant, a low shrubby Pleurandra, and an orchideous plant one of the few representatives of this family in the Australian tropics; the most interesting, however, was a prostrate Grevillea, with oblong smooth leaves, and with thyrsi of fine scarlet flowers; which I consider to be Grevillea Goodii, R. Br.
In several saxifrages not very distant relatives of Drosera the viscid glands equally manifested the power of absorption.
Anybody who can believe that such an apparatus was not intended to capture flies might say the same of a spider's web. Is the intention here to be thought any the less real because there are other species of Drosera which are not so perfectly adapted for fly-catching, owing to the form of their leaves and the partial or total want of cooperation of their scattered bristles?
Thus the investigation of the operations of insectivorous plants, embodied in the work on that topic published in 1875, was started fifteen years before, by a passing observation made during one of Darwin's rare holidays. "In the summer of 1860, I was idling and resting near Hartfield, where two species of Drosera abound; and I noticed that numerous insects had been entrapped by the leaves.
"Trust you for that!" Curtis sneered; "but all the same nothing's going to happen." "I am not sure of that," Hamar said, and after a brief pause began to repeat these words He then got up and, going to the fire, sprinkled over the flames six drachms of belladonna, three drachms of drosera and one ounce of nux vomica; using in each case his left hand.
This plant when eaten by cows communicates a disagreeable taste to milk and butter. ROUND-LEAVED SUN-DEW. Drosera rotundifolia. Very common on marshy commons, and is said to be poisonous to sheep, and to give them the disease called the rot. SEA BARLEY-GRASS. Hordeum maritimum.
But he gave little heed, for he was impatiently awaiting the series of plants which most bewitched him, the vegetable ghouls, the carnivorous plants; the Antilles Fly-Trap, with its shaggy border, secreting a digestive liquid, armed with crooked prickles coiling around each other, forming a grating about the imprisoned insect; the Drosera of the peat-bogs, provided with glandular hair; the Sarracena and the Cephalothus, opening greedy horns capable of digesting and absorbing real meat; lastly, the Nepenthes, whose capricious appearance transcends all limits of eccentric forms.
That the apparatus and the actions of Dionaea and Drosera are purposeless and without advantage to the plants themselves, many have been believed in former days, when it was likewise conceived that abortive and functionless organs were specially created "for the sake of symmetry" and to display a plan; but this is not according to the genius of modern science.
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