DION1EA, a very curious and interesting genus of plants of the natural order drose raem, having a 5-partite calyx, 5 petals, 10 to 20 stamens, and one style, with 5 closely united stigmata. Only one species is known, D. muacipula, sometimes called VENUS'S FLY-TRAP and the CAROLINA CATCHFLY PLANT. It grows in marshy places iu the warmer parts of North America, as far n. as North Carolina, and is a perennial plant, with a rosette of root-leaves, from the midst of which arises a leafless stem (scape) about 6 in. high, terminating in a corymb of white flowers. It is remarkable for the irritability of its leaves. The leaf-stalk is elongated, winged, and leaf-like, and bears at its extremity an orbicular leaf, set round at the margin with stiff hairlike "spines," and having on its upper surface many small glands, and three delicate irritable hairs on each side, so placed that an insect can hardly traverse the leaf without touching one of them, 'when the two sides of the leaf immediately fold together upon it, and lay hold of it, the mar ginal bristle'z crossing one another, and preventing the possibility of escape. The leaf
does not open again till the whole substance of the insect has been absorbed by the plant, and nothing but the skeleton of the captive remains. For this purpose, the plant exudes a secretion of a character somewhat similar in its digestive properties to pepsine; and under the influence of this, the material of the insect capable of yielding nourish ment to the plant, is digested, and ultimately absorbed by the same glands that secreted the fluid. This process of digestion and absorption sometimes occupies three weeks.— See Insectivorous Plants, by Charles Darwin (1875).