must be able to breathe beneath the surface as the fish do, and also be
adapted to thrive without those parts that correspond to gills; for
ponds and streams have an unpleasant way of drying up in summer,
leaving it stranded on the shore. This accounts in part for the
variable leaves on the arrow-head, those underneath the water being
long and ribbon-like, to bring the greatest possible area into contact
with the air with which the water is charged. Broad leaves would be
torn to shreds by the current through which grass-like blades glide
harmlessly; but when this plant grows on shore, having no longer use
for its lower ribbons, it loses them, and expands only broad
arrow-shaped surfaces to the sunny air, leaves to be supplied with
carbonic acid to assimilate, and sunshine to turn off, the oxygen and
store up the carbon into their system.




ARUM FAMILY _(Araceae)_


Jack-in-the-Pulpit; Indian Turnip

_Arisaema triphyllum_

_Flowers_--Minute, greenish yellow, clustered on the lower part of a
smooth, club-shaped, slender spadix within a green and maroon or
whitish-striped spathe that curves in a broad-pointed flap above it.
_Leaves:_ 3-foliate, usually overtopping the spathe, their slender
petioles 9 to 30 in. high, or as tall as the scape that rises from an
acrid corm. _Fruit:_ Smooth, shining red berries clustered on the