interesting is the fact, already noticed, that even among the green
tribes there are to be found many and various lapses from the stated
rules of their feeding. Thus what are we to say of the parasitic
mistletoe, which, while it has grown leaves of its own, and can,
therefore, obtain so much carbon food from the air on its own account,
nevertheless drinks up the sap of the oak or apple which forms its
host, and thus illustrates the spectacle of a green plant feeding like
an animal, on living matter? Or, what may we think of such plants as
the sundew, the Venus' fly trap, the pitcher plants, the side saddle
plants, the butterworts and bladderworts, and others of their kind,
which not only capture insects, often by ingenious and complex lures,
but also digest the animal food thus captured? A sundew thus spreads
out its lure in the shape of its leaf studded with sensitive
tentacles, each capped by a glistening drop of gummy secretion.
Entangled in this secretion, the fly is further fixed to the leaf by
the tentacles which bend over it and inclose it in their fold. Then is
poured out upon the insect's body a digestive acid fluid, and the
substance of the dissolved and digested animal is duly absorbed by the
plant. So also the Venus' fly trap captures insects by means of its
leaf, which closes upon the prey when certain sensitive hairs have
given the signal that the animal has been trapped. Within the leaf the
insect is duly digested as before, and its substance applied to the
nutrition of the plant. Such plants, moreover, cannot flourish
perfectly unless duly supplied with their animal food. Such
illustrations of exceptions to the rule of green plant feeding simply
have the effect of abolishing the distinctions which the diet question
might be supposed to raise between animals and plants. We may return
to the sundews and other insect catchers; meanwhile, I have said
enough to show that to the question, "Can we separate animals from
plants?" a very decided negative reply must be given. Life everywhere
exhibits too many points of contact to admit of any boundary line
being drawn between the two great groups which make up the sum total
of organic existence.--_Illustrated London News._

* * * * *

THE RECOVERY OF SILVER AND GOLD FROM PLATING AND GILDING SOLUTIONS.

In view of the rapid development and extension of the methods of
electro-plating with silver and gold, and of the large amo