I say at [page 139] most, for the papillae will have absorbed some small amount, and so will perhaps the glands of the twelve excluded tentacles which did not become inflected. The application of this principle leads to remarkable conclusions with respect to the minuteness of the doses causing inflection.
On the Action of Distilled Water in Causing Inflection.
Although in all the more important experiments the difference between the leaves simultaneously immersed in water and in the several solutions will be described, nevertheless it may be well here to give a summary of the effects of water. The fact, moreover, of pure water acting on the glands deserves in itself some notice. Leaves to the number of 141 were immersed in water at the same time with those in the solutions, and their state recorded at short intervals of time. Thirty-two other leaves were separately observed in water, making altogether 173 experiments. Many scores of leaves were also immersed in water at other times, but no exact record of the effects produced was kept; yet these cursory observations support the conclusions arrived at in this chapter. A few of the long-headed tentacles, namely from one to about six, were commonly inflected within half an hour after immersion; as were occasionally a few, and rarely a considerable number of the exterior round-headed tentacles. After an immersion of from 5 to 8 hrs. the short tentacles surrounding the outer parts of the disc generally become inflected, so that their glands form a small dark ring on the disc; the exterior tentacles not partaking of this movement. Hence, excepting in a few cases hereafter to be specified, we can judge whether a solution produces any effect only by observing the exterior tentacles within the first 3 or 4 hrs. after immersion.
Now for a summary of the state of the 173 leaves after an immersion of 3 or 4 hrs. in pure water. One leaf had almost all its tentacles inflected; three leaves had most of them sub-inflected; and thirteen had on an average 36.5 tentacles inflected. Thus seventeen leaves out of the 173 were acted on in a marked manner. Eighteen leaves had from seven to nineteen tentacles inflected, the average being 9.3 tentacles for each leaf. Forty-four leaves had from one to six tentacles inflected, generally the long-headed ones. So that altogether of the 173 leaves carefully observed, seventy-nine were affected by the water in some degree, though commonly to a very slight degree; and ninety-four were not affected in the least degree. This [page 140] amount of inflection is utterly insignificant, as we shall hereafter see, compared with that caused by very weak solutions of several salts of ammonia.
Plants which have lived for some time in a rather high temperature are far more sensitive to the action of water than those grown out of doors, or recently brought into a warm greenhouse. Thus in the above seventeen cases, in which the immersed leaves had a considerable number of tentacles inflected, the plants had been kept during the winter in a very warm greenhouse; and they bore in the early spring remarkably fine leaves, of a light red colour. Had I then known that the sensitiveness of plants was thus increased, perhaps I should not have used the leaves for my experiments with the very weak solutions of phosphate of ammonia; but my experiments are not thus vitiated, as I invariably used leaves from the same plants for simultaneous immersion in water. It often happened that some leaves on the same plant, and some tentacles on the same leaf, were more sensitive than others; but why this should be so, I do not know.
FIG. 9. (Drosera rotundifolia.) Leaf (enlarged) with all the tentacles closely inflected, from immersion in a solution of phosphate of ammonia (one part to 87,500 of water.)
Besides the differences just indicated between the leaves immersed in water and in weak solutions of ammonia, the tentacles of the latter are in most cases much more closely inflected. The appearance of a leaf after immersion in a few drops of a solution of 1 grain of phosphate of ammonia to 200 oz.