The weekly messenger. [volume] (St. Martinsville [i.e. St. Martinville] La.) 1886-1948, 1890-09-27
VEGETABLE TRAPS.
0UEDERoUS PLANTS lat
FEED ON INSECTS.
Attracting and Destroying Insects
by Means of an Intoxicating Ex-
udatlon-A Plant which Crushes
Its Prey to Death.

extensively of late into the propagation
OF whlskey shops and lager beer saloons.
us laboratory employed for this purpose
Is the National Botanical Garden here
Tor the lager beer and whiskey shops re-
TERED to are purely of a vegetable ma
ture. They are, in fact, nothing more
or less than plants of a very extraordinary
description, which devote their attention
exclusively to the manufacture and sale
of intoXicants.
l Oh would be struck at once with the
curious appearance of one of these vegeta-
BILE whiskey shops if you saw it standing
In big flower pot, carrying on the
end of each of its long green leaves a
pitcher-shaped receptacle. If the plant
Is open for business you can look into
the pitchers and find them to contain
quite quantity of watery- looking lia-
uor. This is the intoxicant which is
offered to customers, each one being
permitted to help himself to is much
as he likes for the stipulated and inva-
rlable price. Maybe you will find the
pitchers all shut up, for each pitcher
has cover that shuts down whenever
any rain or dew is falling, to prevent
the liquor from becoming diluted.
Now, the customers spoken of are in
sects Of all sorts-such as bluebottle flies.
mosquitoes, cockroaches, red ants, and
so on. There is not bug of any sort,
apparently, that has not weakness for
the liquor supplied by the vegetable
whiskcy shop. The insect walks out on
one of the long leaves till he comes to the
end of it, and finding here a quantity of
delicious drink in the pitcher, he crawls
in and swig s and swigs at it until he dies.
as is supposed, of alcoholism. At all
events he pays for his drink with his life
and leaves his corpse in the pitcher to
sustain by absorption the healthful exis-
tence of the plant. And it is just for
this object-to entrap customers for food
that the plant prepares its liquor.
What the said liquor is composed of,
chemically speaking, attempts are now
being made to find out by analysis. So
far it is only known that it is powerful.
and palatable intoxicant. How much
the insects enjoy it you can perceive by
looking into the pitchers, where you will
often find in each receptacle hundreds of
bugs of all descriptions. Another form
of vegetable whiskey shop has long per-
pendicular trumpet-shaped receptacles
for the liquor, with the wide end of the
trumpets at the top, where the bugs are
expected to crawl in. And when YOU
tear open one of these trumpets-it may
be foot or more in length-after it has
survived its usefulness and dried up, YOU
will usually find it filled from one end to
the other with flies and ants and such
things.
1t has recently been discovered-and
herein lies the expected usefulness of the
investigation now going on regarding
these plants-that different vegetable
whiskey shops have different classes of
customers. One kind of these shops is
frequented almost exclusively by cock
reaches, for whose reception unusually
large pitchers are provided-the plant
carrying them looking as if it had sus-
pended from the ends of its strong leaves
a lot of small bath tubs. Another kind,
with pitchers that resemble in appearance
great big beans. is frequented only by
rcd ants; and still another kind is patron
lied by slugs, and has the rims of its
pitchers armed with teeth to delay guests
who might wish to depart So it would
appear that these whiskey shops could be
prOpagated for use in destroying such
enemies of the household and the gar
den, and it is proposed to find out how
far such thing may be practicable
There is no difficulty, certainly, in rear
ing and maintaining the plants, which
are not tropical exotics, but natives of
this very region about Washington, and
readily to be cultivated in any temperate
climate.
Quite as interesting, in its way, as the
whiskey shop. is the vegetable lager beer
saloon referred to at the beginning of
this article. In general appearance it
resembles the whiskev shop strongly, but
its pitchers are wider at the mouths and
have no tops to them. Thus the liquor
dispensed by the lager beer saloon is
diluted more or less by the dews and |
rains. so that it is not very intoxicating.
However, the drink is intended to attract !
the insect customers and not to poison |
them. Patrons, crawling into the |
pitcher, take drink, and. without feel /
ing it go to their heads very much. start |
to walk out again. But, unfortunately, |
the whole inside of the pitcher is lined
with strong, hairy projections. all point
ing downward toward the liquor and !
AWAY from the briE. 1t was easy |
enough to walk downward, but when the
victim attempts to go upward and out !
again the hairs obs.ruct his progress so
rifectually that he finally tumbles back
into the drink and is miserably drowned.
That is the way the vegetable lager beer
saloon captures its customers by drown
ing.
Another fascinating plant now being