had promised himself much
amusement and information in botanizing, particularly the neighbourhood
of Bayonet Head, and the distant parts of Oyster Harbour. At our former
visit to this place he had searched in vain for that curious little plant
Cephalotus follicularis, Br.,* but on this occasion he was more
fortunate, for he found it in the greatest profusion in the vicinity of
the stream that empties itself over the beach of the outer bay where we
watered. Of this he says: "The plants of cephalotus were all in a very
weak state, and none in any stage of fructification: the ascidia, or
pitchers, which are inserted on strong foot-stalks, and intermixed about
the root with the leaves, all contained a quantity of discoloured water,
and, in some, the drowned bodies of ants and other small insects. Whether
this fluid can be considered a secretion of the plant, as appears really
to be the fact with reference to the nepenthes, or pitcher-plant of
India,** deposited by it through its vessels into the pitchers; or even a
secretion of the ascidia themselves; or whether it is not simply
rainwater lodged in these reservoirs, as a provision from which the plant
might derive support in seasons of protracted drought, when those marshy
lands (in which this vegetable is alone to be found) are partially dried
of the moisture that is indispensable to its existence, may perhaps be
presumed by the following observations. The opercula, shaped like some
species of oyster, or escalop-shells, I found in some pitchers to be very
closely shut upon their orifices, although their cavities, upon
examination, contained but very little water, and the state of the
weather was exceedingly cloudy, and at intervals showery; if, therefore,
the appendages are really cisterns, to receive an elemental fluid for the
nourishment of the plant in times of drought, it is natural to suppose
that this circumstance would operate upon the ramified vessels of the
lids, so as to draw them up, and allow the rain to replenish the
pitchers. Mr. Brown also, who had an opportunity in 1801 of examining
plants fully grown, supposes it probable that the vertical or horizontal
positions in which the opercula were remarked, are determined by the
state of the atmosphere, at the same time that he thinks it possible that
the fluid may be a secretion of the plant. The several dead insects that
were observed within the vases of cephalotus were very possibly deposited
there by an insect