complete. Plants may be detected in process of evolution toward their
ideals just as nations and men are. Doubtless when Jack's mechanism is
perfected, his guilt will disappear. A little way above the florets the
club enlarges abruptly, forming a projecting ledge that effectually
closes the avenue of escape for many a guileless victim. A fungous gnat,
enticed perhaps by the striped house of refuge from cold spring winds,
and with a prospect of food below, enters and slides down the inside
walls or the slippery, colored column: in either case descent is very
easy; it is the return that is made so difficult, if not impossible, for
the tiny visitors. Squeezing past the projecting ledge, the gnat finds
himself in a roomy apartment whose floor--the bottom of the pulpit--is
dusted over with fine pollen; that is, if he is among staminate flowers
already mature. To get some of that pollen, with which the gnat
presently covers himself, transferred to the minute pistillate florets
waiting for it in a distant chamber is, of course, Jack's whole aim in
enticing visitors within his polished walls; but what means are provided
for their escape? Their efforts to crawl upward over the slippery
surface only land them weak and discouraged where they started. The
projecting ledge overhead prevents them from using their wings; the
passage between the ledge and the spathe is far too narrow to permit
flight. Now, if a gnat be persevering, he will presently discover a gap
in the flap where the spathe folds together in front, and through this
tiny opening he makes his escape, only to enter another pulpit, like the
trusted, but too trusting, messenger he is, and leave some of the
vitalizing pollen on the fertile florets awaiting his coming.

But suppose the fly, small as he is, is too large to work his way out
through the flap, or too bewildered or stupid to find the opening, or
too exhausted after his futile efforts to get out through the overhead
route to persevere, or too weak with hunger in case of long detention in