Lying in ambush for chance insects, as these sundews and pitcher plants do, may seem nearly the limit of what is to be expected of leaves. Merely to be always on the job, with a plentiful supply of insect digester, might seem to be all that could well be expected from what, after all, are only modified leaves. But nature’s devices are infinite, and there are still other ways to accomplish the apparently impossible. In a small section of the southeastern States there grows a plant that not only lies passively in wait for insects, but actually captures them. This flycatcher, known as Venus’s flytrap, has two valves to the leaf blade, supported on a stout broad stalk so arranged that their fringed surfaces face each other. If an insect--and many do--alights between these valves, they close together rapidly and the prisoner is hopelessly caught by the interlocking marginal bristles that fringe each valve. In this case there are glands on the face of the valves, against which the live insect is tightly pressed, and which secrete a digestive fluid. When nothing remains the valves slowly open and are ready for the next victim. They may be made to close by slight irritation with a lead pencil, and it is the impact of the insect that releases one of the most curious examples of movement in leaves known to us. There are a few other plants in different parts of the world that by still other modifications of their leaves catch and digest insects, but none of them are to be considered as “insect eaters,” or other names implying that they have definite designs on the life of passing insects. The process is sufficiently remarkable, the success of the operation so sure, that there is nothing gained by attributing to such plants, as many have done in the past, malignant characters that are possibly confined only to man. The whole wonderful process is more reasonably explained by realizing that all these insectivorous plants are so by virtue of necessity, that many of them are bog plants, which are often hard put to it to get suitable food, and that the extraordinary change of shape and function is but one more contribution of leaves to the economy of nature.