form.  They are thickly covered for a considerable space near their extremities with the upcurved prickles, which are quite absent in the latter form; and they generally bear on their tips two or three straight prickles instead of one.  The bilobed leaf appears also to be rather larger and somewhat broader, with the pedicel by which it is attached to the upper end of the petiole a little longer.  The points on the infolded margins likewise differ; they have narrower bases, and are more pointed; long and short points also alternate with much more regularity than in the European form.  The glands and sensitive hairs are similar in the two forms.  No quadrifid processes could be seen on several of the leaves, but I do not doubt that they were present, though indistinguishable from their delicacy and from having shrivelled; for they were quite distinct on one leaf under circumstances presently to be mentioned.

Some of the closed leaves contained no prey, but in one there was a rather large beetle, which from its flattened tibiae I suppose was an aquatic species, but was not allied to Colymbetes.  All the softer tissues of this beetle were completely dissolved, and its chitinous integuments were as clean as if they had been [page 329] boiled in caustic potash; so that it must have been enclosed for a considerable time.  The glands were browner and more opaque than those on other leaves which had caught nothing; and the quadrifid processes, from being partly filled with brown granular matter, could be plainly distinguished, which was not the case, as already stated, on the other leaves.  Some of the points on the infolded margins likewise contained brownish granular matter.  We thus gain additional evidence that the glands, the quadrifid processes, and the marginal points, all have the power of absorbing matter, though probably of a different nature.

Within another leaf disintegrated remnants of a rather small animal, not a crustacean, which had simple, strong, opaque mandibles, and a large unarticulated chitinous coat, were present.  Lumps of black organic matter, possibly of a vegetable nature, were enclosed in two other leaves; but in one of these there was also a small worm much decayed.  But the nature of partially digested and decayed bodies, which have been pressed flat, long dried, and then soaked in water, cannot be recognised easily.  All the leaves contained unicellular and other Algae, still of a greenish colour, which had evidently lived as intruders, in the same manner as occurs, according to Cohn, within the leaves of this plant in Germany.

Aldrovanda vesiculosa, var. verticillata.—­Dr. King, Superintendent of the Botanic Gardens, kindly sent me dried specimens collected near Calcutta.  This form was, I believe, considered by Wallich as a distinct species, under the name of verticillata.  It resembles the Australian form much more nearly than the European; namely in the projections at the upper end of the petiole being much attenuated and