A consideration of these facts in
conjunction with the acknowledged
neuropathic tendencies of genius
seems to illume many of the mysteri
ous anecdotes with which the names
of great men and women are associ
atet. The hallucinations of Mahomet
and of Joan of Arc, the appearance of
his dying wife to Doctor Donne in
Paris and Luther's discomfiture of the
devil by summary contusion with a
misfile ink bottle, to mention but a
few instances, prosaically resolve into
cases of abnormal sensibility of the
nervous system. Who would learn
with surprise that Lucretius, Haw
thoree or Emily Bronte saw ghosts?
It should rather be an occasion for
wonder that genius is ever free from
the visitations of specters.
PLANT THRIVES ON FLIES
Little Wced, Grown in England. Helps
in Work of Ridding Homes
of Pest.
In England there grows a little red
dish-leaved, odd-iooking plaint known
as sundew. It is but an inconspicu
ous weed, and .-et literary and scien
tific honors have been her ped upon It.
The leaf is round and flat, and is
covered by a number of small red
gzands, which act as the attractive
advertisement to the misguided in
sects. Their knobby ends are covered
with a glutinous secretion, which
glistens like honey in the sunlight.
and so gains for the plant its. common
English name. But the moment a
hnaless fly, attracted by hones of meat
or nectar. settles quiet', in Its midst,
on hospitable thoug hts intent, the
viscid liquid holds him tight immedi
ately, and clogs his leg; and wings, so
that he is snared exactly as a sparrow
Is snared in birdlime.
