Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1896 — PLANTS AND A MEAT DIET. [ARTICLE]

PLANTS AND A MEAT DIET.

Darwin Makes a Daring Statement apd Supports It? by Experiment. ' : It has been proven time ami again that the so-called “cannibal pl.tnfts,” of which the Ven us-fly-trap is the type, are much more healthy when allowedtheir insect food than they are when reared under netting or m any other manner which excludes them from their, regular meat diet.*. The above is an oddity of itself, says the,St. Louis_ Republic? especially when we consider the fact that there is a certain school of botanists which teaches thatcannibal plants make no use whatever of the insect prey captured by them, but it is nothing compared with the bold assertion made by Francis Darwin. That noted scientific gentleman bravely meets the ’‘vegetarian botanists” with the assertion that all kinds and classes of plants, whether known as “meateaters” or not, bear more of the heavier fruits and seeds when fed on meat than those that are not allowed a flesh diet. He grew two lots, comprising various varieties .of the different common plants. One lot was regularly fed (through their roots, of course) with pure juices compressed from meat, the other with water and the various fertilizers. The final figures on this odd experiment proved that the plants which, were fed pure meat juice bore 168 fruits of the different kinds, while the unfed plants of the same number and original condition bore but 74. Also that the pampered plants bore 240 seeds to every 100 borne by the plants that were hot given a chance to gratify cannibalistic ..tastes. This is certainly a discovery worthy of much careful study and extensive experiment.