The sun dew, common in marshes, expands a little, sticky, pink-green shirt-button of a leaf, on which are numerous stiff hairs. The clear drops of gum attract insects to the leaf, and they are held by the feet or wings. Their struggles cause the leaf to fold together, when the hairs pierce the body of the insect and drink up the juices. When only a dry husk remains the leaf opens and the wind shakes the shell away.
The pitcher-plant invites insects by a honey-like secretion. They fall into the liquid stored in the pitcher and are thus drowned, because, owing to numerous downward-pointing hairs in the throat of the pitcher, they cannot climb back. Easy is the descent into evil! The acrid liquid in the pitcher digests the bodies of the insects, turning them into plant food. Flies, ants, gnats, little beetles, are often caught, but bees very seldom. Bees have their own affairs to attend to, and cannot go picnicing into pitcher-plants.
A DAUGHTER OF THE FOREST
By Evelyn Raymond
CHAPTER XVI
Science and Superstition
SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.
Brought up in the forests of northern Maine, and seeing few persons excepting her uncle and Angelique, the Indian housekeeper, Margot Romeyn knows little of life beyond the deep hemlocks. Naturally observant, she is encouraged in her out-of-door studies by her uncle, at one time a college professor. Through her woodland instincts, she and her uncle are enabled to save the life of Adrian Wadislaw, a youth who, lost and almost overcome with hunger, has been wandering in the neighboring forest. To Margot the new friend is a welcome addition to her small circle of acquaintances, and after his rapid recovery she takes great delight in showing him the many wonders of the forest about her home. But finally, after many weeks, the uncle decides, because of reasons which will be known later, that it would be better for Margot if Adrian left them. Accordingly, he puts the matter before the young man, who, although reluctant to leave his new friends, volunteers to go. Under the guidance of Pierre Ricord, a young Indian, the lad sets out for the nearest settlement. The journey for the most part is made by water, and while attempting to shoot the rapids of the stream which they have been following their canoe is dashed against a rock and both occupants are thrown into the seething whirlpool.
For an instant Adrian closed his eyes that he might not see the inevitable end. But—was it inevitable? At the logging camp he had heard of just such accidents as this and not all of them were fatal. The water in its whirling sometimes tossed that which it had caught outward to safety.