a pistillate trap where no pollen is, what then? Open a dozen of Jack's
pulpits, and in several, at least, dead victims will be found--pathetic
little corpses sacrificed to the imperfection of his executive system.
Had the flies entered mature spathes, whose walls had spread outward and
away from the polished column, flight through the overhead route might
have been possible. However glad we may be to make every due allowance
for this sacrifice of the higher life to the lower, as only a temporary
imperfection of mechanism incidental to the plant's higher development,
Jack's present cruelty shocks us no less. Or, it may be, he will become
insectivorous like the pitcher plant in time. He comes from a rascally
family, anyhow. His cousin, the cuckoo-pint, as is well known, destroys
the winged messenger bearing its offspring to plant fresh colonies in a
distant bog, because the decayed body of the bird acts as the best
possible fertilizer into which the seedling may strike its roots.

In June and July the thick-set club, studded over with bright berries,
becomes conspicuous, to attract hungry woodland rovers in the hope that
the seeds will be dropped far from the parent plant. The Indians used to
boil the berries for food. The farinaceous root (corm) they likewise
boiled or dried to extract the stinging, blistering juice, leaving an
edible little "turnip," however insipid and starchy.


Skunk or Swamp Cabbage

_Symplocarpus foetidus_

_Flowers_--Minute, perfect, foetid; many scattered over a thick,
rounded, fleshy spadix, and hidden within a swollen, shell-shaped,
purplish-brown to greenish-yellow, usually mottled, spathe, close to the