In the northern part of America a common wild flower of one of these families, Apocynum androsmæfolium, has this insect-catching habit. Numerous small insects meet death, and hang to the flowers like scalps to the wild Indian.
Considerable advance has been made in vegetable physiology, though no one has as yet been able to reach the origin of the life-power in plants. The power that enables an oak to maintain its huge branches in a horizontal direction, or that can lift or overturn huge rocks, or split them apart as the lightning rifts a tree trunk, is yet unknown. On the opposite page is an illustration of a circumstance frequently observed, wherein even a delicate root fibre can pierce a potato or other structures.
BANANA FLOWERS.
Possibly the greatest botanical advance of the century is in relation to cryptogamic plants, those low organisms which as mildews and moulds are most familiar to people generally. As microscopes increase in power, new forms are discovered. Over forty thousand species have already been described, and we may fairly say that there are nearly half as many forms of vegetable life invisible to the naked eye as can be seen by our unaided visual organs. Their wants and behaviors are very much the same as in the flowering plants or higher orders, as they are usually termed. But there is one great difference in this, that they feed mainly on nitrogen, and have no use for carbon. They care little for light, but yet have an upward tendency under certain forms, as do those which seek the light. The agarics that revel in the darkness of a coal mine, yet curve upward as heartily as a corn sprout in the open air. Just as in flowering plants, also, they are mostly innocuous, and indeed many absolutely beneficial to man, a very small portion only being poisonous, or connected with the diseases of the human race. Even in these cases their power is closely guarded by nature. The spores of fungi are found to require such a nice combination of conditions before they germinate, that, unless these occur, they will retain their vegetative power many years in a state of absolute rest. The mycelium of the mushroom, as the real plant—the cobwebby portion under ground—only starts to grow when just so many degrees of heat, neither more nor less, with just so much moisture, and the proper food, are all at hand together; and large numbers are known to be very select in the kind of food they will make use of at all. One genus, known as Cordyceps, will only start when the spore comes in contact with the head of a caterpillar. And various species of the genus will avoid a kind of caterpillar that another would enjoy. In our own country we have one that feeds on the larvae of the May Beetle, and is known as Cordyceps Melolonthæ. In Australia is a very pretty species, which takes on the appearance of the antlers of a deer. This is known as Cordyceps Andrewsii.
THE CRUEL-PLANT.
Butterfly caught in the flower.
OLD POTATO PENETRATED BY ROOTLET WITH A NEW POTATO.