Page:Insectivorous Plants, Darwin, 1899.djvu/71

 were then compared, and certainly there was much less aggregation in the leaf which had been subjected to the carbonic acid than in the other. Another plant was exposed in the same vessel for 2 hrs. to carbonic acid, and one of its leaves was then placed in a solution of one part of the carbonate to 437 of water; the glands were instantly blackened, showing that they had absorbed, and that their contents were aggregated; but in the cells close beneath the glands there was no aggregation even after an interval of 3 hrs. After 4 hrs. 15 m. a few minute spheres of protoplasm were formed in these cells, but even after 5 hrs. 30 m. the aggregation did not extend down the pedicels for a length equal to that of the glands. After numberless trials with fresh leaves immersed in a solution of this strength, I have never seen the aggregating action transmitted at nearly so slow a rate. Another plant was left for 2 hrs. in carbonic acid, but was then exposed for 20 m. to the open air, during which time the leaves, being of a red colour, would have absorbed some oxygen. One of them, as well as a fresh leaf for comparison, were now immersed in the same solution as before. The former were looked at repeatedly, and after an interval of 65 m. a few spheres of protoplasm were first observed in the cells close beneath the glands, but only in two or three of the longer tentacles. After 3 hrs. the aggregation had travelled down the pedicels of a few of the tentacles for a length equal to that of the glands. On the other hand, in the fresh leaf similarly treated, aggregation was plain in many of the tentacles after 15 m.; after 65 m. it had extended down the pedicels for four, five, or more times the length of the glands; and after 3 hrs. the cells of all the tentacles were affected for one-third or one-half of their entire lengths. Hence there can be no doubt that the exposure of leaves to carbonic acid either stops for a time the process of aggregation, or checks the transmission of the proper influence when the glands are subsequently excited by carbonate of ammonia; and this substance acts more promptly and energetically than any other. It is known that the protoplasm of plants exhibits its spontaneous movements only as long as it is in an oxygenated condition; and so it is with the white corpuscles of the blood, only as long as they receive oxygen from the red corpus-