John examined it carefully. Then he said: "This is a plant of which we have several in the United States, but none which are as active. This is called Venus' Fly Trap."
"That is curious," remarked Harry. "I wouldn't have paid any attention to it but I saw a fly alight on it, and these little feelers seemed to close around it, and hold it."
"It works on that plan exactly. It is in that way it gets its food."
"But why should the feelers be able to grasp the fly the moment it touches the leaf?"
"Do you recall about what the Professor told you of the peculiar power of plants to absorb food of particular kinds by a faculty called irritability?"
"Yes; I remember."
"By means of that, plants are enabled to select just the kinds of substances that they want, and can digest. If you will carefully notice the leaf, after it has seized a fly it will be observed that the leaf exudes a watery substance, and that has the property of digesting the fly, or of converting the liquid part of the insect into a form of food which is taken through the leaf, and from the leaf it goes into the plant itself."