Other plants prey upon animals, and are equipped with mental faculties enabling them- to efficiently capture their prey. We have typical illustrations of the adaptation of means to end in the case of the insect-eating plants previously referred to, but there are certain forms of plant-life which trap and devour much large animals; which forms are found principally in tropical countries. Dunstan, the naturalist, reported finding on the banks of Lake Nicaragua a particularly vicious plant of this class which by the natives is called the Devil's Noose. This bush-like plant is equipped with long tendrils, or whip-like feelers, flexible, strong, black, polished, and without leaves, which secrete a viscid fluid. These tendrils are employed by the plant to entangle small animals passing under its bush, and to then drain their blood and absorb their flesh. The naturalist one day passing along the banks of this lake was aroused by the shrieks and cries. of his small dog. Pushing forward through the underbrush he found the little animal tightly enmeshed in a number of these black, slimy, bandlike tendrils which were cutting into its flesh by chafing and rubbing, the bleeding-point have been reached in a number of places. He found that these bands were the tendrils or branches of this particularly carnivorous plant, which he described as virtually "a land octopus." The natives of the tropics have weird legends of man-eating plants or trees of this kind, but so far science has not discovered an actual specimen of this kind, though it is admitted that the same is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

Certain plants, minerals, and animals have been sacred among all the nations of the earth because of their peculiar sensitiveness to the astral...

As I was holding raised on them my brows, Behold! a serpent with six feet darts forth In front of one, and fastens wholly on him. With middle feet it...

Now, on the man who proposes the question denying that plants are animals, we shall show that he affirms what contradicts himself. For, having...

But the rind is as a death, and cannot comprehend the life of the tree, but only hangeth to it, and is a cover to the tree, in which worms do harbour,...

In like manner even as the animals, with grain of fifty and five species and twelve species of medicinal plants, have arisen from the primeval ox,...

And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.

Note thou; and even as by me are uttered These words, so teach them unto those who live That life which is a running unto death; And bear in mind, whe...

On the nature of plants it says in revelation, that, before the coming of the destroyer, vegetation had no thorn and bark about it; and, afterwards,...

The habits of the insects were carefully studied. Therefore the ant was looked upon as emblematic of industry and foresight, as it stored up supplies...

But when the sweet quality leapeth or springeth up through the knot, then the bitter quality had so much affected or wrought upon it that it was all i...

But Aristotle, while he thinks that plants are possessed of a life of vegetation and nutrition, does not consider it proper to call them animals; for ...

In 1609 Henry Khunrath's Amphitheatrum Sapientiæ Æternæ was published. Eliphas Levi declared that within its pages are concealed all the great...

It falls into the forest, and no part Is chosen for it; but where Fortune hurls it, There like a grain of spelt it germinates. It springs a sapling,...

The most remarkable of allegorical creatures was the mantichora, which Ctesias describes as having aflame-colored body, lionlike in shape, three rows...

The occult properties of the mandrake, while little understood, have been responsible for the adoption of the plant as a talisman capable of...

Ten thousand of them grew forth of one special description, for keeping away the ten thousand species of disease which the evil spirit produced for...

The learned have had many disputations, questions, conceits and opinions concerning the fierce malignity and evil that is in all the creatures in...

And noxious creatures. were diffused by him over the earth, biting and venomous, such as the snake, scorpion, frog (kalvâk), and lizard (vazak),—so th...

From whence now is also arisen the Disobedience of the Beasts towards Man, and their Wildness, [or flying in their Face,] as also, that they are so [c...

According to a popular superstition, the mandrake shrank from being touched and, crying out with a human voice, clung desperately to the soil in...