When we go to some sunny cranberry bog to look for these sundews,
nothing could be more innocent looking than the tiny plant, its
nodding raceme of buds, usually with only a solitary little
blossom (that opens only in the sunshine) at the top of the
curve, its leaves glistening with what looks like dew, though the
midsummer sun may be high in the heavens. A little fly or gnat,
attracted by the bright jewels, alights on a leaf only to find
that the clear drops, more sticky than honey, instantly glue his
feet, that the pretty reddish hairs about him act like tentacles,
reaching inward, to imprison him within their slowly closing
embrace. Here is one of the horrors of the Inquisition operating
in this land of liberty before our very eyes! Excited by the
struggles of the victim, the sensitive hairs close only the
faster, working on the same principle that a vine's tendrils do
when they come in contact with a trellis. More of the sticky
fluid pours upon the hapless fly, plastering over his legs and
wings and the pores on his body through which he draws his
breath. Slowly, surely, the leaf rolls inward, making a temporary
stomach; the cruel hairs bind, the glue suffocates and holds him
fast. Death alone releases him. And now the leafs orgy begins:
moistening the fly with a fresh peptic fluid, which helps in the
assimilation, the plant proceeds to digest its food. Curiously
enough, chemical analysis proves that this sundew secretes a
complex fluid corresponding almost exactly to the gastric juice
in the stomach of animals.

Darwin, who fed these leaves with various articles, found that
they could dissolve matter out of pollen, seeds, grass, etc.; yet
without a human caterer, how could a leaf turn vegetarian? When a
bit of any undesirable substance, such as chalk or wood, was