Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 65.djvu/431

Rh humor it into healthy activity. It is one of our rarest American plants, being found only in the hogs of a restricted area on the coast of North Carolina.

In the Venus' fly-trap, as in the East Indian pitcher-plant, only a portion of the leaf has been modified for insect capture,—a rounded terminal portion cut off from the leaf proper by a constriction, and hinged along its midrib so as to be capable of closing like a book. On this portion, the 'trap,' are three sorts of hairs essential to its operation

—the first long and stout, fringing the edges of the two lobes, the second but six in number, three in the center of each lobe, and the third minute, innumerable ones covering the entire inner surface of each lobe.

If an insect alighting on a fly-trap leaf chances to touch any one