It is a perplexing matter to reconcile our feelings to the rigor, and our reason to the necessity, of some plants being made the instrument of destruction to the insect world. Of British plants we have only a few so constructed, which, having clammy joints and calyxes, entangle them to death. The sun-dew (droseræ) destroys in a different manner, yet kills them without torture. But we have one plant in our gardens, a native of North America, than which none can be more cruelly destructive of animal life, the dogsbane (apocynum androsæmifolium),[20] which is generally conducive to the death of every fly that settles upon it. Allured by the honey on the nectary of the expanded blossom, the instant the trunk is protruded to feed on it, the filaments close, and, catching the fly by the extremity of its proboscis, detain the poor prisoner writhing in protracted struggles till released by death, a death apparently occasioned by exhaustion alone; the filaments then relax, and the body falls to the ground. The plant will at times be dusky from the numbers of imprisoned wretches. This elastic action of the filaments may be conducive to the fertilizing of the seed by scattering the pollen from the anthers, as is the case with the berberry; but we are not sensible that the destruction of the creatures which excite the action is in any way essential to the wants or perfection of the plant, and our ignorance favors the idea of a wanton cruelty in the herb; but how little of the causes and motives of action of created things do we know! and it must be unlimitable arrogance alone that could question the wisdom of the mechanism of him “that judgeth rightly;” the operations of a simple plant confound and humble us, and, like the hand-writing on the wall, though seen by many, can be explained but by ONE.[21]