. The complete herbalist : or the people their own physicians by the use of nature's remedies : describing the great curative properties found in the herbal Materia medica, Vegetable.; Botany, Medical.; Medicinal 20 THE COMPLETE HERBALIST. leaves are very curiously constructed. They have broad leaf-like petioles, at whose extremity there are two fleshy tubes, which form the real leaf, and which are armed with strong-, sharp spines, three on the blade of each lobe, and a fringe of larger spines round the margin. When an insect touches the base of the central spines the leaf c
. The complete herbalist : or the people their own physicians by the use of nature's remedies : describing the great curative properties found in the herbal Materia medica, Vegetable.; Botany, Medical.; Medicinal 20 THE COMPLETE HERBALIST. leaves are very curiously constructed. They have broad leaf-like petioles, at whose extremity there are two fleshy tubes, which form the real leaf, and which are armed with strong-, sharp spines, three on the blade of each lobe, and a fringe of larger spines round the margin. When an insect touches the base of the central spines the leaf col- lapses, and the poor insect is caught, been either impaled by the cen- tral spines or entrapped by the others. The leaf then remains closed, the fringe of long spines being firmly interlaced and locked together till the body of the insect has wasted away. This apparatus being the nearest approach to a stomach which has yet being observed in plants, an experi- ment was tried some years ago of feeding a dioncea (Venus's Fly-Trap) with very small particles of raw meat, when it was found that the leaves closed in the same way as they would have done over an insect, and did not open again until the meat was consumed. The leaves of this plant possess medicinal properties, which, when properly prepared in tincture or decoction, have been found of exceeding efficacy in many diseases of the digestive organs of the human being. Sarracenia^ or Side-Saddle flower, the leaves of which are pitcher- shaped, resembling an old-fashioned side-saddle, six of which generaUy belong to each plant. Each of these pitchers wiU hold nearly a wine- glassful, and are generaUy filled with water and aquatics, which imdergo decomposition, or a sort of digestion^ and serve as a nutriment to the plant. This animal characteristic is also illustrated in the sensitive plant (Mimosa Sensitiva), which the slightest touch suffices to make it close its foHoles. If we cut with scissors the extreme end of one folio
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