Chapter 11

RECAPITULATION OF THE CHIEF OBSERVATIONS ON DROSERA ROTUNDIFOLIA.

As summaries have been given to most of the chapters, it will be sufficient here to recapitulate, as briefly as I can, the chief points. In the first chapter a preliminary sketch was given of the structure of the leaves, and of the manner in which they capture insects. This is effected by drops of extremely viscid fluid surrounding the glands and by the inward movement of the tentacles. As the plants gain most of their nutriment by this means, their roots are very poorly developed; and they often grow in places where hardly any other plant except mosses can exist. The glands have the power of absorption, besides that of secretion. They are extremely sensitive to various stimulants, namely repeated touches, the pressure of minute particles, the absorption of animal matter and of various fluids, heat, and galvanic action. A tentacle with a bit of raw meat on the gland has been seen to begin bending in 10 s., to be strongly incurved in 5 m., and to reach the centre of the leaf in half an hour. The blade of the leaf often becomes so much inflected that it forms a cup, enclosing any object placed on it.

A gland, when excited, not only sends some influence down its own tentacle, causing it to bend, but likewise to the surrounding tentacles, which become incurved; so that the bending place can be acted on by an impulse received from opposite directions, namely from the gland on the summit of the same tentacle, and from one or more glands of the neighbouring tentacles. Tentacles, when inflected, re-expand after a time, and during this process the glands secrete less copiously, or become dry. As soon as they begin to secrete again, the tentacles are ready to re-act; and this may be repeated at least three, probably many more times.

It was shown in the second chapter that animal substances placed on the discs cause much more prompt and energetic inflection than do inorganic bodies of the same size, or mere mechanical irritation; but there is a still more marked difference in the greater length of time during which the tentacles remain inflected over bodies yielding soluble and nutritious matter, than over those which do not yield such matter. Extremely minute particles of glass, cinders, hair, thread, precipitated chalk, &c., when placed on the glands of the outer tentacles, cause them to bend. A particle, unless it sinks through the secretion and actually touches the surface of the gland with some one point, does not produce any effect. A little bit of thin human hair 8/1000 of an inch (.203 mm.) in length, and weighing only 1/78740 of a grain (.000822 mg.), though largely supported by the dense secretion, suffices to induce movement. It is not probable that the pressure in this case could have amounted to that from the millionth of a grain. Even smaller particles cause a slight movement, as could be seen through a lens. Larger particles than those of