We have our walls in many places here decorated with most of the varieties of the great snapdragon (antirrhinum majus); the white, the pink, and the common: and that beautiful deviation, with a white tube and crimson termination, is slowly wandering from the garden, and mixing with its congeners. It has not, perhaps, been generally observed, that the flowers of this plant, “bull-dogs,” as the boys call them, are perfect insect traps; multitudes of small creatures seek an entrance into the corolla through the closed lips, which upon a slight pressure yield a passage, attracted by the sweet liquor that is found at the base of the germen; but when so admitted, there is no return, the lips are closed, and all advance to them is impeded by a dense thicket of woolly matter, which invests the mouth of the lower jaw— “Smooth lies the road to Pluto’s gloomy shade; But ’tis a long, unconquerable pain, To climb to these ethereal realms again.” But this snapdragon is more merciful than most of our insect traps. The creature receives no injury when in confinement; but, having consumed the nectareous liquor, and finding no egress, breaks from its dungeon by gnawing a hole at the base of the tube, and returns to liberty and light. The extraordinary manner in which the corolla of this plant is formed, the elastic force with which the lower limb closes and fits upon the projection of the upper, manifest the obvious design in the great Architect, “whose hands bended the rainbow;” and the insects are probably the destined agents whereby the germen is impregnated, for as soon as this is effected, the limbs become flaccid, lose their elasticity, are no longer a place of confinement, but open for the escape of any thing that might have entered. The little black pismire is a common plunderer of this honey.