[page] 530

A CARNIVOROUS PLANT

[…]

Mr Darwin in his recent work Insectivorous Plants, propounds a theory founded on observed facts connected with this plant [Dionaeas], and which is applied both to the general closing and to the incurving of the blades; but neither his view nor that of Carpenter accounts for the special movements of the marginal spines, which take place at first simultaneously with the closure of the leaf but which afterwards exhibit independent movements. Moreover, the amount of contraction of the leaf-cells does not seem to me to be sufficient to close the blades.

On the whole, I cannot regard Mr Darwin as so felicitous in this instance as, in so many others, he undoubtedly is. His accurate observations, however, on this point are most valuable, and unquestionably have a very important bearing on the process, though they do not completely account for the full closure of the leaf.