A VEGETABLE VILLAIN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2210, 9 July 1896, Page 51

A VEGETABLE VILLAIN.

It seems to be as easy for some men to lie excessively as it is for others to drink or to smoke excessively. I have been acquainted with individuals so completely given over to aimless and inconsequent lying that charity could do no better than blame heredity for producing the mental state involved. Persons so affected will, if you are minded to listen to them, spin falsehoods for hours on end, merely aB a morbid diversion for themselves—a sort of pastime or relaxative process, like whist-playing or oricket. All liars are not of this sort, however, for some at least can lie artistically and add vim to their hitherto-unheard-of reoitals. Such a one it was who recently described a plant whicb, as alleged by the writer, catches and kills human beings and feeds upon tbe j uices of their bodies. Such wonderful things are usually lecated at. a distance, and this one is no exception, aB it was discovered, bo fy is alleged, by Herr, Oarl Leche in Madagascar. This fellow-countryman of Baron Munchausen told how he "was eye-witness to the crushing to death and devouring, so to speak, of a woman by this man-eating plant of most curiou3 construction." His description is almost enough to make us afraid to tread on grass. "The atrocious caunibal, that had j been so inert and dead, came to sudden, savage life. The slender, delicate palpi, with the fury of-starved serpents, quivered a moment over her head ; then, aB if instinct with demoniac intelligence, fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her nack and arms; then when her awful screams and yet more awful laughter rose wilder, to b9 instantly strangled down again into a gurgling moan, -.. the tendrils, one after another, like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity rose, retracted themselves, and wrapt her about in fold after fold, ever tightening with the cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anacondas fastening; upon their prey. Ib was the barbarity of the laocoon withont its beauty, this strange, horrible murder. And now the groat leaves rose slowly and stiffly, like tha arms of a derrick, erected themselves in the air, approaching one another, and closed about tbe dead and hampered victim with the silent force of a hydraulic press or the ruthless purpose of a thumbscrew. A moment more, and while I could see the bases of these great levers pressing more tightly towards oaoh other, from their interstices there trickled down the stalk streams of the viscid, honey-like fluid, mingled horribly with the blood and oozing viscera of the victim." That is a bit of real, hair-raising description, the writer of which might be pleasantly employed leoturing on botany to the inmates of a lunatic asylum. Failing that, he might be made a valuable ally of our friends who are so determined to find des*ga in Nature whether ib be there or not.

If, however, flies and other small winged beings could talk so that we might comprehend, they would doubtless harrow our souls with just such' tales as the one given above, only they would be true. Bees, wasps, dragon-flies' even, as well as hosts of other insects, would complain bitterly of the havoc wrought among their relations by plants which actually do catch and use as food a great many kinds of inseots. Amongst such plants the sundew occupies an unenviably conspicuous position in temperate climates. Although it is but an inconspicuous, reddishleaved, bog-growing British plant, it is said to have had more honours heaped upon its head than any other member of the British

flora. It is the subjeob of an . ode by Mr Swinburne, and the late Charles Darwin wrote many learned ohapters as the result of his loving study of its peculiarities. "Its portrait has been sketched by Innumerable artists, and its biography narrated by innumerable authors. And all this attention has been showered upon it, not because it is beautiful, or good, or modest, or retiring, but simply and solely because ib is atrociously and deliberately wicked."

Not a leaf of the sundew bub has done its murder— perhaps even thrice repeated such a deed, — for it is a curious fact that ! each leaf oan at most only digest two or three times. The flattish, round leaf of the sundew is covered by a lot of small red glands, which aot as lures to its insect victims. The knobby ends of these glands are covered with a glutinous secretion, which glistens like honey in the sunlight, and so gains for the plant its oommon English name. In other countries it is known by suoh names as sun rose, sonnentau, &c. There are several speoies of sundew native to New Zealand, and very pretty little plants they are. The sundew grows usually embedded among bog moss, which forms' a fitting background for the rich red colour of its leaves. These, to the number of half a dozen or so, lie prostrate, and from their midsb arises a small upright stalk with inconspicuous . flowers. Each leaf consists of a long narrow stalk expanded into a more or less ciroular blade, the edges and surface of which bear scores of these club-like " tentacles " or glands already alluded to. These tentacles are very complex structures. The glandular bead of each contains a marvellous arrangement of water pipe?, cell-layers, and other complexities too intricate for description here. Ib is, however, from these parts that the apparent "de% drop " on the end of each hair is distilled. Ib i 3, then, with the sundew as of old it was with Samson, whose strength lay in his hair. The hairs of tbe sundew are miniature towers of strength to itself, and sources of destruction to many a hapless flying thing. " These hairs or tentacles ... are sensitive, mobile, digestive, and> absorptive— most marvellous little structures, indifferent to the drops of rain which often fall upon them, but responsive to the stimulus of a midge. An insect, unwary or deluded, alights on tbe leaf, and is forthwith entangled; as ib struggles the secretion becomes more abundant. The tentacles, too, bend down upon the entangled midge— first one, and in a few minutes another and another, till all the 200 may close upon the prey like so many slow, merciless fingers. The leaf may become more concave, and after a complete closure looks like a closed fist. As the result of the secretion the booty ie digested and the products of digestion absorbed."

Eminent specialists have proven conclusively that the sundew is well able to digest, and that ib does -it in ways quite similar to the digestive processes of animals. By careful experiments Mr Darwin showed how • the sundew ould, indead, digest roast meat, egg, cheese, &c, with an amount of efficiency comparable to that of the digestive system of an' English agricultural labourer, Horny matters, ohitin, cellulose or woody matters ib failed to digest, just as we ourselves are incapable of digesting all such. The sundew also consumes vegetable food in the form of pollen grains, which it drains of their protoplasmic contents. It was for long matter of debate whether the plants that got most animal food were very greatly benefited thereby, or whether those that gob none or little were not as well off without it. Such questions are by no means easy of solution as a rule, but this one, at least, has been put at rest by Charles Darwin's son. to showing how easy it is to carry on such experiments, if one is only painstaking enough, I subjoin an account of the method pursued and of the remarkable results attained.

Franois Darwin took six platesf nl of thriving plants of sundew, and divided off each by a transverse bar. Then, choosing the least flourishing side of each, he placed, on the 12th June, 1877, roast meal in morsels of about one-fiftieth of a grain on the leaves, and renewed the dose at intervals. Soon the plants on the fed side were clearly greener than thoso on the starved sides, and their leaves contained more chlorophyll and starch. In less than two months the number of flower-stalks was half as numerous again on the fed as on the unfed sides, while the number and oharacter of the leaves and the colour of the flower-stalks all showed a great superiority. "The flower-stalks "were all cub at the end of August, when their numbers were as IGS to 100, their total weight -as 230 to 100, and the average weight per stem as 110 to. 100 for the fed and unfed sides respectively. The total numbers of seed capsules were as 191 to 100, or nearly double ; the average number of seeds in each oipsule a3 12 to 10 respectively. The superiority of the fed plants over the unfed w*s even more clearly shown by comparing their seeds, the* average weights per seed btiing as 157 to 100, their total calculated number as 240 to 100, and their total weight as 380 to 100."

After all that has been learnt about it and its doings, the sundew remains still in some ways a living puzzle, but. with regard to the numerous murders of which it is guilty no one can believe that ib is "other than a vegetable villain of a most pronounced type.