Page:Amazing Stories Volume 02 Number 06.pdf/11

530 —then he glided back and disappeared in the crowd of mourners.

HREE years passed. Harriet Richards moved to Liverpool, and managed the household for her brother Jack, the ship-owner. Life resumed its usual way and even in her memory, the frightfulness of the events gradually paled. One evening, as Harriet sat in the confortablycomfortably [sic]-heated sitting room opposite her brother, the winter storm howling over the Atlantic, her glance rested on a column in the "Daily Telegraph."

Instinctively she took it up and read: "The Life Memoirs of the recently deceased Professor Dr. de Palfi, known as a botanist and explorer will soon appear. The professor's greenhouses, with their orchid cultures, situated in Vienna, his adopted home city, have enjoyed great European fame for the last ten years. In his memoirs, the professor tells in an impressive way of his extended explorations which took him into the most distant regions of all the continents. With the permission of the publisher we can quote from its contents today the sensational information that de Palfi on his last journey in which he reached the interior of Madagascar, actually came upon the much-debated 'Man Eating Plant.' It is supposed to be a very rare variety of Cypripedia gigantea belonging to the class of the giant orchids, and is the largest flower on earth. These plants, growing in certain remote valleys, have ascribed to them the power to seize small and also larger animals, and even men, who come within their reach. In the spring and fall, always according to de Palfi's observation, the pericarp, or seed-container, forms a sort of natural trap. It thrusts out a quantity of sharp claw-like points, which, as they sink into the flesh, are strong enough to hold the large animals prisoners. Within, the plant is covered all over with suction caps, containing a sort of resinous gum that acts like birdlime in a bird trap. By virtue of a certain plant stimulus, a reflex motion back and forth sets up, enabling the enormous orchid to draw into itself even the body of a full-grown man. The plant, it is understood, is a pure flesh-eater. It feeds itself principally on large animals and men. Sometimes the victims can be freed from the embraces of the flower after the murderous attack of the plant. Otherwise the captured individual is completely absorbed and fourteen days later the bare skeleton is cast out."