object. I find Midges, Plant-lice and
Ants caught in it, as well as tufted seeds which have blown from the
capitula of the Cichoriaceae. A Gad-fly, as big as a Blue bottle, falls
into the trap before my eyes. She has barely alighted on the perilous
perch when lo, she is held by the hinder tarsi! The Fly makes violent
efforts to take wing; she shakes the slender plant from top to bottom.
If she frees her hinder tarsi she remains snared by the front tarsi
and has to begin all over again. I was doubting the possibility of her
escape when, after a good quarter of an hour's struggle, she succeeded
in extricating herself.

But, where the Gad-fly has got off, the Midge remains. The winged Aphis
also remains, the Ant, the Mosquito and many another of the smaller
insects. What does the plant do with its captures? Of what use are
these trophies of corpses hanging by a leg or a wing? Does the
vegetable bird-limer, with its sticky rings, derive advantage from these
death-struggles? A Darwinian, remembering the carnivorous plants, would
say yes. As for me, I don't believe a word of it. The Oporto silene is
ringed with bands of gum. Why? I don't know. Insects are caught in these
snares. Of what use are they to the plant? Why, none at all; and that's
all about it. I leave to others, bolder than myself, the fantastic idea
of taking these annular exudations for a digestive fluid which will
reduce the captured Midges to soup and make them serve to feed the
Silene. Only I warn them that the insects sticking to the plant do not
dissolve into broth, but shrivel, quite uselessly, in the sun.

Let us return to the Tachytes, who is also a victim of the vegetable
snare. With a sudden flight, a huntress arrives, carrying her drooping
prey. She grazes the Silene's lime-twigs too closely. Behold the Mantis
caught by the abdomen. For twenty minutes at least the Wasp, still on
the wing, tugs at her, tugging again and again, to overcome the cause of
the hitch and release the spoil. The hauling-method, a continuation of
the flight, comes to nothing; and no other is attempted. At last the
insect wearies and leaves the Mantis hanging to the Silene.

Now or never was the moment for the intervention of that tiny glimmer
of reason which Darwin so generously grants to animals. Do not, if you
please, confound reason with intelligence, as people are too prone to
do. I deny the one; and the other is incontestable, within very modest
limits. It was, I said,