In marshy places near the mouth of the Cape Fear River, in the vicinity of Wilmington, North Carolina, grows the Venus' fly-trap, most wonderful of all the death-dealers of vegetation. Like much else in nature's handiwork this plant might well have given inventors a hint worth taking. The hairy fringes of its leaves are as responsive to a touch from moth or fly as the sensitive plant itself. And he must be either a very small or a particularly sturdy little captive that can escape through the sharp opposed teeth of its formidable snare. It is one of the unexplained puzzles of plant life that the Venus' fly-trap, so marvellous in its ingenuity, should not only be confined to a single district, but should seem to be losing its hold of even that small kingdom. Of still another type is the pitcher plant, or side-saddle flower, which flaunts its deep purple petals in June in many a peat-bog from Canada southward to Louisiana and Florida. Its leaves develop themselves into lidded cups, half-filled with sweetish juice, which first lures a fly or ant, then makes him tipsy, and then despatches him. The broth resulting is both meat and drink to the plant, serving as a store and reservoir against times of drought and scarcity. [Illustration: Shut for Slaughter] Now the question is, How came about this strange and somewhat horrid means of livelihood? How did plants of so diverse families turn the tables on the insect world, and learn to eat instead of being themselves devoured? A beginner in the builder's art finds it much more gainful to examine the masonry of foundations, the rearing of walls, the placing of girders and joists, the springing of arches and buttresses, than to look at a cathedral, a courthouse, or a bank, finished and in service. In like manner a student of insect-eating plants tries to find their leaves in the making, in all the various stages which bridge their common forms with the shapes they assume when fully armed and busy. Availing himself of the relapses into old habits which plants occasionally exhibit under cultivation, Mr. Dickson has taught us much regarding the way the pitcher plant of Australia, the _Cephalotus_, has come to be what it is. He has arranged in a connected series all the forms of its leaf from that of a normal leaf with a mere dimple in it, to the deeply pouched and lidded pitcher ready for deceitful hospitalities. And similar transformations have without doubt taken place in the pitcher plants of America. Observers in the Cape of Good Hope have noted two plants _Roridula dentata_ and _Biblys gigantea_, which are evidently following in the footsteps of the sundews, and may be expected in the fulness of years to be their equal partners in crime. But why need we wander so far as South Africa to find the germs of this strange rapacity when we can see at home a full dozen species of catch-fly, sedums, primulas, and geraniums pouring out glutinous juices in which insects are entangled?