I carried home some
plants, and on giving them insects saw the movements of the
tentacles, and this made me think it probable that the insects
were caught for some special purpose. Fortunately a crucial test
occurred to me, that of placing a large number of leaves in
various nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous fluids of equal density;
and as soon as I found that the former alone excited energetic
movements, it was obvious that here was a fine new field for
investigation.
During subsequent years, whenever I had leisure, I pursued my
experiments, and my book on 'Insectivorous Plants' was published
in July 1875--that is, sixteen years after my first observations.
The delay in this case, as with all my other books, has been a
great advantage to me; for a man after a long interval can
criticise his own work, almost as well as if it were that of
another person. The fact that a plant should secrete, when
properly excited, a fluid containing an acid and ferment, closely
analogous to the digestive fluid of an animal, was certainly a
remarkable discovery.
During this autumn of 1876 I shall publish on the 'Effects of
Cross and Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom.' This
book will form a complement to that on the 'Fertilisation of
Orchids,' in which I showed how perfect were the means for cross-
fertilisation, and here I shall show how important are the
results.
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