On this same patch of moor we may find another flesh-eating plant. This is smaller than the last, and less easily found. It has a slender flower-stalk with a spike of small whitish flowers rising from the centre of a curious group of leaves. The leaves lie flat on the ground; they are small and round, no larger than split peas, and covered with bright red hairs that look like tiny red pins stuck in a tiny green pin cushion. Each of these hairs carries at its tip a bead of clear fluid, which glitters in the sun; hence the plant is called the sundew. Let any thirsty insect come to drink this dew, and a strange thing happens. He finds his feet held fast by the sticky dewdrops, and the more he struggles the more of these does he rub against. He is held fast until he is suffocated, and then he is digested and absorbed by the leaf. When the fly alights on the plant, the hairs begin to bend in towards the centre of the leaf. Even those hairs which have not been touched bend over until all of them are helping to hold fast the prey and dissolve it with their liquid. If the insect alights near the edge of the leaf, he is thus carried towards the centre and held fast, while the leaf itself bends so as to form a cup for the acid that pours from the hairs. If two insects alight on the same leaf, the hairs form into two groups, those near each animal curving towards him, so that the leaf acts as if it had two hands. In this way all the insects that come are attended to. There are many other curious plants to be found in the peat-moss, but those we have mentioned will suffice to show how much of interest there is in our bleak mosses and moors. SOME COMMON WEEDS. What is a weed? We may best describe it, perhaps, as a plant growing in the wrong place. A weed is not necessarily ugly, or harmful, or even useless. Many common weeds are very beautiful, and some of them are very useful; but if they are growing where we wish something else to grow, we call them “weeds,” and root them out, or try to do so. Grass in our hayfields and meadows is a valuable plant; grass in our flower-borders or turnip-fields is a weed. So when we speak of weeds, we do not mean any special class of plants, but only those which force themselves upon our notice by springing up where we wish something else to grow. Many of our common weeds are very interesting plants to the botanist. They have to fight for their lives; and the way in which they scatter their seeds, and the power of those seeds to lie dormant for years waiting a chance to grow, are well worth study. It is a war between the farmer and wild nature, and when we look over our fields and pastures in spring and summer we see clearly enough that the farmer is not always the victor. In many a cornfield the oat crop seems to be merely incidental, while the hardier children of nature flourish in spite of its intrusion.