ch is attracted by the sweet juice on the leaf, three
extremely sensitive bristles or hairs giving the plant notice that the
insect is touching them. A recent writer gives the following
description of a peculiar plant. He says: "On the shores of Lake
Nicaragua is to be found an uncanny product of the vegetable kingdom
known among the natives by the expressive name of 'the Devil's Noose.'
Dunstan, the naturalist, discovered it long ago while wandering on the
shores of the lake. Attracted by the cries of pain and terror from his
dog, he found the animal held by black sticky bands which had chafed
the skin to bleeding point. These bands were branches of a
newly-discovered carnivorous plant which had been aptly named the 'land
octopus.' The branches are flexible, black, polished and without
leaves, and secrete a viscid fluid."

You have seen flowers that closed when you touched them. You remember
the Golden Poppy that closes when the sun goes down. Another plant, a
variety of orchid, has a long, slender, flat stem, or tube, about
one-eighth of an inch thick, with an opening at the extreme end, and a
series of fine tubes where it joins the plant. Ordinarily this tube
remains coiled up into a spiral, but when the plant needs water (it
usually grows upon the trunks of trees overhanging swampy places) it
slowly uncoils the little tube and bends it over until it dips into the
water, when it proceeds to suck up the water until it is filled, when
it slowly coils around and discharges the water directly upon the
plant, or its roots. Then it repeats the process until the plant is
satisfied. When the water is absent from under the plant the tube moves
this way and that way until it finds what it wants--just like the trunk
of an elephant. If one touches the tube or trunk of the plant while it
is extended for water, it shows a great sensitiveness and rapidly coils
itself up. Now what causes this life action? The plant has no brains,
and cannot have reasoned out this process, nor even have acted upon
them by reasoning processes. It has nothing to think with to such a
high degree. It is the Will behind the curtain, moving this way and
that way, and doing things.

There was once a French scientist named Duhamel. He planted some beans
in a cylinder--something like a long tomato can lying on its side. He
waited until the beans began to sprout, and send forth roots downward,
and shoots upward, according to nature's invariable rule. Then he