First as to sensitiveness and movement. Sensitiveness is manifested by
movement or change of form in response to an external impression. The
sensitiveness in the sundew is all in the gland which surmounts the
tentacle. To incite movement or other action, it is necessary that the
gland itself should be reached. Anything laid on the surface of the viscid
drop, the spherule of clear, glairy liquid which it secretes, produces no
effect unless it sinks through to the gland; or unless the substance is
soluble and reaches it in solution, which, in the case of certain
substances, has the same effect. But the glands themselves do not move, nor
does any neighboring portion of the tentacle. The outer and longer
tentacles bend inward (toward the centre of the leaf) promptly, when the
gland is irritated or stimulated, sweeping through an arc of 1800 or less,
or more--the quickness and the extent of the inflection depending, in
equally vigorous leaves, upon the amount of irritation or stimulation, and
also upon its kind. A tentacle with a particle of raw meat on its gland
sometimes visibly begins to bend in ten seconds, becomes strongly incurved
in five minutes, and its tip reaches the centre of the leaf in half an
hour; but this is a case of extreme rapidity. A particle of cinder, chalk,
or sand, will also incite the bending, if actually brought in contact with
the gland, not merely resting on the drop; but the inflection is then much
less pronounced and more transient. Even a bit of thin human hair, only
1/8000 of an inch in length, weighing only the 1/78740 of a grain, and
largely supported by the viscid secretion, suffices to induce movement;
but, on the other hand, one or two momentary, although rude, touches with a
hard object produce no effect, although a repeated touch or the slightest
pressure, such as that of a gnat's foot, prolonged for a short time, causes
bending. The seat of the movement is wholly or nearly confined to a portion
of the lower part of the tentacle, above the base, where local irritation
produces not the slightest effect. The movement takes place only in
response to some impression made upon its own gland at the distant
extremity, or upon other glands far more remote. For if one of these members
suffers irritation the others sympathize with it. Very noteworthy is the
correlation between the central tentacles, upon which an insect is most
likely to alight, and these external and larger ones, which, in proportion
to their distance from the centre, take the larger share in the movement.
The shorter central ones do not move at all when a bit of meat, or a
crushed fly, or a particle of a salt of ammonia, or the like, is placed upon
them; but they transmit their excitation across the leaf to the surrounding
tentacles on all sides; and they, although absolutely untouched, as they
successively receive the mysterious impulse, bend strongly inward, just as
they do when their own glands are excited. Whenever a tentacle bends in
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