DROSSERA ANGLICANA, or the SUNDEW (see DROSSERA, Encycl.), is a very minute villous plant, usually growing entangled with moss on peat bogs; the leaves are curiously fringed with numerous strong reddish hairs, terminated by small pellucid globules of viscous liquor, which occasion, by the reflection of the sun, that peculiar lustre from which its name is derived. It is in these hairs that the essential properties of the plant reside; for if a small insect should fix itself on one of the leaves, these hairs immediately begin to close, one by one, till the insect is wholly environed by them, and then the leaf in which it is imprisoned gradually bends inwards, so as to reach the base: in this state the insect is killed by the operation of the acrimonious juice exuding from the ends of the hairs. Rothius (as quoted by Withering, in his Arrangement of British Plants,) mentions the effects of this singular plant, occasioned by the irritation of an ant, which he placed on the centre of one of the leaves with a pair of pincers. The ant, in endeavouring to escape, was held fast by the viscous juice of the smaller hairs till the large ones, together with the edges of the leaf, closed in and imprisoned it. The ant died in fifteen minutes; but he observes, that the effects followed sooner or later, in different experiments, according to the state of the weather. Dr Withering has published a similar account of the sensitive properties of the sundew, which was communicated to him by two of his botanical friends, and which he has made very entertaining and interesting. The same thing is confirmed by a writer in the Monthly Magazine for August 1797; who says, that whenever he made experiments on the drossera with ants and other diminutive insects, he commonly found them perish in a shorter time than fifteen minutes. His experiments were made on the drossera rotundifolia. Rothius, however, observes, that the longifolia produces the same effects, but with greater rapidity. In concluding his account, Dr Withering suggests this enquiry: "Whether this destruction of insects be not necessary to the welfare of the plant?" And it is surely worth some botanist's while to take some pains to answer the question.