Page:Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume 12.djvu/70

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VIII. ''On the Power of Sarracenia adunca to entrap Insects.In a Letter to Sir James E. Smith, Pres. Linn. Soc, from James Macbride, M.D. of South Carolina.''

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Your remarks on the œconomy of the Sarraceniæ in your Introduction to Botany, led me to think of making this communication; and I was emboldened to undertake it from having observed in your prefatory remarks on the study of this science, a spirit of peculiar liberality and disinterestedness. My object is to lay before you the result of my observations on the insect-destroying-process carried on by the tubular leaves of these plants.

It will hardly be necessary to inform you that the Sarracenia flava and S. adunca (S. minor of Walter, and S. variolaris of Michaux,) grow in the flat country of this state in great abundance. With the latter my experiments have been chiefly conducted. If, in the months of May, June, or July, when the leaves of these plants perform their extraordinary functions in the greatest perfection, some of them be removed to a house and fixed in an erect position, it will soon be perceived that flies are attracted by them. These insects immediately approach the fauces of the leaves, and leaning over their edges appear to sip with eagerness something from their internal surfaces. In this position they linger; but at length, allured as it would seem by the pleasure of taste, they enter the tubes. The fly which has thus changed its situation, will be seen to stand unsteadily, it totters for a few seconds, slips,

and