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But, when the sunny bank under the hedge is pale with primroses, when dog-violets spread a mauve carpet over clearings in the little wood, if cowslips be plentiful though oxslips are few, and rare orchids bless the bogs of our locality, pushing strange insect heads, through beds of Drosera bathed in perpetual dew then, dear children, restrain the natural impulse to grub everything up and take the whole flora of the neighbourhood home in your pinafores.
Besides these organs of sense, which distinguish cold, moisture, and darkness, the leaves of mimosa, and of dionæa, and of drosera, and the stamens of many flowers, as of the berbery, and the numerous class of syngenesia, are sensible to mechanic impact, that is, they possess a sense of touch, as well as a common sensorium; by the medium of which their muscles are excited into action.
Darwin that the leaves of Drosera act differently when different objects are placed upon them, the bristles closing upon a particle of raw meat as upon a living insect, while to a particle of chalk or wood they are nearly inactive. The same facts were independently brought out by Mr.
Treat selects for publication the observations of one particular day in July, when the sundew-leaves were unusually active; for their moods vary with the weather, and also in other unaccountable ways, although in general the sultrier days are the most appetizing: "At fifteen minutes past ten of the same day I placed bits of raw beef on some of the most vigorous leaves of Drosera longifolia.
To make such observations is as easy as it is interesting. Throughout the summer one has only to transfer plants of Drosera from the bogs into pots or pans filled with wet moss if need be, allowing them to become established in the somewhat changed conditions, or even to put out fresh leaves and to watch their action or expedite it by placing small flies upon the disk of the leaves.
Hooker, 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 of the contained watery liquid, which thereupon becomes capable of acting in the manner of that of Drosera and Dionaea, dissolving flesh, albumen, and the like.
Perhaps the nearest analogy may be found in such plants as Drosera and Dionaea; for here animal matter is digested and converted into peptone not within a stomach, but on the surfaces of the leaves. Calciferous Glands. But almost as many theories have been advanced on their use as there have been observers.
No sooner was it thus ascertained that at least one species of Sarracenia allures flies to their ruin than it began to appear that just as in the case of Drosera most of this was a mere revival of obsolete knowledge.
Darwin obtained these results, fourteen years ago, he could claim for Drosera a power and delicacy in the detection of minute quantities of a substance far beyond the resources of the most skillful chemist; but in a foot-note he admits that "now the spectroscope has altogether beaten Drosera; for, according to Bunsen and Kirchhoff, probably less than the 1/200000000 of a grain of sodium can be thus detected."
Adansonia the largest tree known, its dimensions Bulbous roots contain the embryon flower, seen by dissecting a tulip-root Flowers of Colchicum and Hamamelis appear in autumn, and ripen their seed in the spring following Sunflower turns to the sun by nutation, not by gyration Dispersion of seeds Drosera catches flies Of the nectary, its structure to preserve the honey from insects
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