ith it some of the juices of the insect or
the products of its decomposition.

[Illustration: Fig. 492. Plant of Dionaea muscipula, or Venus's Fly-trap,
reduced in size.]

478. Dionaea muscipula, the most remarkable vegetable fly-trap (Fig. 176,
492), is related to the Sundews, and has a more special and active
apparatus for fly-catching, formed of the summit of the leaf. The two
halves of this rounded body move as if they were hinged upon the midrib;
their edges are fringed with spiny but not glandular bristles, which
interlock when the organ closes. Upon the face are two or three short
and delicate bristles, which are sensitive. They do not themselves move
when touched, but they propagate the sensitiveness to the organ itself,
causing it to close with a quick movement. In a fresh and vigorous
leaf, under a high summer temperature, and when the trap lies widely
open, a touch of any one of the minute bristles on the face, by the
finger or any extraneous body, springs the trap (so to say), and it
closes suddenly; but after an hour or so it opens again. When a fly or
other small insect alights on the trap, it closes in the same manner,
and so quickly that the intercrossing marginal bristles obstruct the
egress of the insect, unless it be a small one and not worth taking.
Afterwards and more slowly it completely closes, and presses down upon
the prey; then some hidden glands pour out a glairy liquid, which
dissolves out the juices of the insect's body; next all is re-absorbed
into the plant, and the trap opens to repeat the operation. But the same
leaf perhaps never captures more than two or three insects. It ages
instead, becomes more rigid and motionless, or decays away.

479. That some few plants should thus take animal food will appear less
surprising when it is considered that hosts of plants of the lower
grade, known as Fungi, moulds, rusts, ferments, Bacteria, etc., live
upon animal or other organized matter, either decaying or living. That
plants should execute movements in order to accomplish the ends of their
existence is less surprising now when it is known that the living
substance of plants and animals is essentially the same; that the beings
of both kingdoms partake of a common life, to which, as they rise in the
scale, other and higher endowments are successively superadded.

480. =Work uses up material and energy= in plants as well as in animals.
The latter live and work by the consumption and decomposit