Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/197

Rh instances they are quite as beautifully colored as the largest and handsomest exotic orchids.

The principle of Venus's fly-trap is somewhat different, though its practice is equally nefarious. This curious marsh-plant, instead of setting hocused bowls of liquid for its victims, like a Florentine of the fourteenth century, lays a regular gin or snare for them, on the same plan as a common snapping rat-trap. The end of the leaf is divided into two folding halves by the midrib, and on each half are three or five highly sensitive hairs. The moment one of these hairs is touched by a fly, the two halves come together, inclosing the luckless insect between them. As if on purpose to complete the resemblance to a rat-trap, too, the edges of the leaf are formed of prickly, jagged teeth, which fit in between one another when the gin shuts, and so effectually cut off the insect's retreat. The plant then sucks up the juices of the fly, and, as soon as it has fully digested them, the leaf opens automatically once more, and resets the trap for another victim. It is an interesting fact that this remarkable insectivore appears to be still a new and struggling species, or else an old type on the very point of extinction, for it is only found in a few bogs over a very small area in the neighborhood of Wilmington, Southern California.

Strongly contrasting with the æstheticism of the artistically minded bees, who go in chiefly for peacock blues and Tyrian purples, as well as with the frank Philistinism of the carrion-flies, who like good, solid, meaty-looking red and brown flowers, is the ingenious secretiveness of the ichneumon-flies, who chiefly patronize invisible green blossoms, indistinguishable to a casual observer among the thick foliage in whose midst they grow. Most insects are very casual observers: they require a good sensible flaring patch of yellow or scarlet (like the posters of a country circus) to attract their giddy attention. But the ichneumons are sharp-eyed and highly discerning creatures, which have developed a whole set of pale-green flowers, so inconspicuous as to escape the notice of color-loving bees and butterflies, yet with a good supply of easily accessible honey to reward their cunning visitors. This honey the monopolist ichneumons of course keep strictly for their own use. That large and very odd-looking English orchid, the tway-blade, extremely common in woods and shady places, though seldom observed by the general public on account of its uniform greenness, is an excellent example of these ichneumon-made blossoms. The whole spike stands a foot and a half high, with numerous separate green flowers, each about half an inch long, yet it is very little noticed save by regular plant-hunters, because its color makes it all but indistinguishable among the tall grasses and sedges with whose blades it is closely intermingled. Yet, if it were only pink or purple, like most of the other English orchids, it would certainly rank as one of the largest and handsomest among our native wild-flowers.

In a few cases, the relation between the plant and the insect that