In some Sarracenias the vase is brought up into a sort of hood or dome with the entrance at one side and below. There are thin patches on this dome or cupola, and small insects, attracted by the light which comes through these bare places, remain dashing themselves against them or crawling over them just as flies do on a window-pane, until they become tired and fall down into the water below. There is something horrible in the cold and careful way in which this plant arranges its baits for "confiding insects. The latter are fed with honey, even on the very border of the assassin's den, but after this farewell revel they generally slip upon the smooth edge, and are hurled, like lost souls, down into the abyss."[148] [148] Dennett. In another plant, the Pitcher Plant (_Nepenthes_, so called from the drug which produces the sleep of death), we find an even more beautifully arranged pitcher which acts in very much the same way. It is, however, only the end of a rather long leaf, or rather of its midrib, that is turned up to act as a pitcher. There are similar stiff hairs pointing downwards, and honey is plentifully secreted. But, in Nepenthes, there is also a distinct secretion which digests the bodies of the drowning insects. The ferment resembles the active principle of the gastric and pancreatic juices of the human body, and, as acids are also present, the insect's body becomes changed into nutritious juices which readily diffuse into the plant.[149] Dr. Macfarlane found that when the pitchers were stimulated by being given insects, the liquid inside them could digest fibrin to jelly in from three-quarters to one hour's time.[150] But certain insects have somehow managed to educate their larvæ to resist the gastric juices of Nepenthes. [149] Green, _Vegetable Physiology_, p. 203. [150] _Annals Botany_, vol. 3, p. 253, and vol. 6, p. 401. Near Fort Dauphin, in Madagascar, I found great quantities of _Nepenthes madagascariensis_. Almost every pitcher was one-third to two-thirds full of corpses, but in some of them large, fat, white maggots, of a very unprepossessing appearance, were quite alive and apparently thriving. These must have been the larvæ of a blowfly similar to that which has been mentioned by others as inhabiting Sarracenia. At the same place a white spider was very often to be seen. Its web was spun across the mouth of a pitcher, and its body was quite invisible against the bleached remains inside. It had suited its colour to the corpses within, in order that it might steal from the Nepenthes the due reward of all its ingenious contrivances!