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The tiny plant grows in peaty soil, inconspicuous but for the 
frequent glisten of the sunlight upon its drop-studded leaves. As you 
watch the little plant, lo ! the food comes. A fluttering insect touches 
the glistening spots with vibrating wing or dependent feet. The gland 
that has caught the victim secretes more and more fluid. And now 
the other tentacles begin slowly to bend towards the place where the 
captive still struggles faintly. After a time the fluid alters in quality ; 
it becomes acid, and in a short time the insect has been digested by 
the plant and the tentacles move back, the leaf is as it was before, and 
after a while will be ready for another victim. “That a tentacle, 
whose own gland is touched should bend is strange enough. That 
tentacles, remote from those actually touched, should have transmitted 
to them, through the tissues of the leaf, some influence which causes 
them to bend and the glands on their summits to secrete more fluid 
and more acid fluid, is still more strange. The fact, to those who 
remember how in the animal kingdom nerves will transmit an influ 
ence to glands and modify the nature of their secretions, is of deepest 
significance.”—(Dr. Aveling. The Student’s Darwin, pp. 88-go.) 
In illustration of the movement of vegetable life, similar 
to the instinctive actions of animals associated with re 
production, we may instance the strange motions of 
stamens and pistils. Mr. David Syme says :— 
“ As soon as the pollen is mature, the stamens move towards the 
pistils or the pistils towards the stamens, or both towards each other. 
These movements never commence till the pollen is mature, and 
cease the moment fertilisation has been accomplished ; and what 
is still more extraordinary, if it should happen that fertilisation has 
already been brought about by artificial means or by the visits of 
insects, these movements, being then unnecessary, never take place. 
Fertilisation is impossible if the pollen should by any means become 
wet ; hence plants take the greatest care possible to prevent this 
occurring. Many plants close their corolla when it is about to rain, 
or when the air is moist with dew ; others hide their flowers under 
their leaves at night. Even aquatic plants have to keep their pollen 
dry—almost an impossible thing for them, one would imagine, yet 
they contrive to accomplish it.”—{On the Modification of Organisms. 
P' f 33-) 
In the same way the ovipositor of the insect finds its 
analogue in the action of the peduncle of the Ivy Linaria, 
which grows on an old wall—its flowers and the flower- 
stalks stand out for the sun and insects to visit the little