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Wheatly, an eminent surgeon in Cateaton-street, London, observed these leaves to bend upwards, when an insect settled on them, like the leaves of the muscipula veneris, and pointing all their globules of mucus to the centre, that they compleatly intangled and destroyed it. Caprifolium. Honeysuckle. Five males, one female.
At the same time flesh-meat with or without spice is recommended, with Peruvian bark and steel in small quantities between their meals, and half a grain of opium or a grain, with five or eight grains of rhubarb at night. Vegetables are irritable; mimosa, dionæa muscipula. Vegetable secretions. 2. Vegetable buds are inferior animals, are liable to greater or less irritability.
This appears particularly in the mimosa or sensitive plant, whose leaves contract on the slightest injury; the dionæa muscipula, which was lately brought over from the marshes of America, presents us with another curious instance of vegetable irritability; its leaves are armed with spines on their upper edge, and are spread on the ground around the stem; when an insect creeps on any of them in its passage to the flower or seed, the leaf shuts up like a steel rat-trap, and destroys its enemy.
But we must not be carried away by these more showy plants to the exclusion of some very curious and interesting little things which I see we are in danger of forgetting. Here, carefully covered by a bell-glass, is a fine specimen of Dionæa muscipula, or Venus's fly-trap. Every reader of natural history is familiar with its economy; but one does not often get a sight of it.
Males approach the female in Gloriosa, Fritillaria, and Kalmia Contrivances to destroy insects in Silene, Dionæa muscipula, Arum muscivorum, Dypsacus, &c.
"On your own Earth there are, we learn, hundreds of varieties of insectivorous plants: the Venus fly-trap, known otherwise as the Dionaea Muscipula, which has a leaf hinged in the median line, with teeth-like bristles.
In the Dionaea Muscipula there is a still more wonderful contrivance to prevent the depredations of insects: The leaves are armed with long teeth, like the antennæ of insects, and lie spread upon the ground round the stem; and are so irritable, that when an insect creeps upon them, they fold up, and crush or pierce it to death.
The spirits of the Muscipula party rose as they discussed the remaining MSS., but these were not of the highest order of merit; and Anna thought that the really good would be sufficient; and all the Underwood kith and kin had sufficient knowledge of the Press through their connection with the 'Pursuivant' to be authorities on the subject.
Even Gilbert considers it advisable to preface this gruesome chapter with a sort of "Caveat emptor" apology to the reader: "Ut tamen secundum ordinem procedamus, in primis cognosactur cognoscere desiderantibus, ne dolus dolo patrocinetur, vel simplex dolose muscipula claudatur."
Observations on the Irritation of Vegetables, by T. E. Smith, M. D. Addition to the note on Silene. I saw a plant of the Dionaea Muscipula, Flytrap of Venus, this day, in the collection of Mr.
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