"Well, you seem to make out that you know him better than I do. Take my word for it, he is making an experiment somewhere. Let us go into the garden, we are sure to find him playing with some worms, or spiders, or something like that. There you are," cried Riche as they approached the conservatory, "did I not tell you where we would find him?" Delapine, fully occupied with some plants, looked up on hearing their voices. "Hullo, what on earth are you doing with that Venus's fly-trap?" called out Villebois, as he watched Delapine letting a tiny spider which was hanging by the end of its thread drop inside the lobes of the carniverous plant, known to science as the Dionaea muscipula, with one hand, while he held his watch in the other. "This is exceedingly interesting, Riche, I am trying an experiment to find out how long the trap takes to close again after the spider has touched the little hair filaments projecting out from the inside of the leafy pair of lobes." While still speaking, he allowed the spider to fall lower and lower until its body touched a hair. Then, before the little fellow had time to climb up over the leaf, the two lobes closed together and held him prisoner. "Now let us sit here and watch," said Delapine, thoroughly absorbed in the experiment. "Before many minutes have elapsed the animal will be killed by the secretion clogging up its spiracles, and then the insect will be digested by the juices secreted by the glands." "And then what will happen?" asked Villebois. "Wait a moment and you will see." After a lapse of about fifteen minutes the lobes began slowly to open again, and there before the eyes of the deeply interested watchers lay the spider, sucked half dry and shrivelled up at the bottom of the cavity. "What I cannot understand, and what I have been trying to discover," said Delapine, "is what makes the leaves close instantly when the hairs are touched, and what it is that causes the gastric juices to pour out precisely as it does in the stomach when one has taken a meal. In our own case the reason is clear enough because the stomach is supplied with nerves and nerve-ends. But botanists assure us that plants have no traces of nerves. And again, why should the leaves reopen the very moment that the plant has had a sufficient meal? Now here is another plant which, like a chameleon, devotes all its energies to catching flies," continued Delapine as he led them over, and pointed to a fine specimen of Drosera.