458 DR. J. D. noOKKR ON FIJCnSTA COCCIXEA. 



Insects in search of honey would naturally alight upon the 

 step-shaped limh of the labellum, and thence, climhing over 

 its arched claw, would descend into the centre of the flower ; 

 obviously, in so doing, they would not remove the poUinia, as the 

 pressure of their bodies upon the operculum would keep it effec- 

 tually closed ; but in retiring backwards out of the flower (see fig. 6), 

 the head or thorax of the insect would come in contact with the 

 projecting point of the operculum ; it would then be raised or 

 opened, and one or both of the pollinia would be carried away 

 upon the head of the insect, and this would be done without fer- 

 tilizing the stigma of the flower which had been entered. The 

 insect thus armed with the poUinia upon its head would go on to 

 the next blossom, and, in descending into the flower over the 

 arched claw of the labellum, would deposit one or both of the 

 poUinia upon the glutinous stigmatic surface of the column while 

 the operculum was yet closed, and, again, in retiring from the 

 flower would take away another pair of pollinia, and so on until 

 the work of fertilization was completed. 



By this clever contrivance no flower would be fertilized with its 

 own pollen ; and if the insect passed on, many flowers would be 

 fertilized with the pollen from other plants, which would be of 

 great importance to them ; neither would the officiating insect be 

 encumbered by an inconvenient number of pollinia, which, in 

 some cases, obstructs the work of fertilization, and causes great 

 inconvenience to the agent thus employed. 



« 



On the true Fuchsia coccinea of Alton. 



By Jos. D. HooIeb, M.D., F.E.S., D.C.L., LL.D., &c. 



[Read Dec. 19, 1867.] 



Whet^ going through the greenhouses of the Oxford Botanic 

 Garden, last September, with Mr. "W. H. Baxter, E saw, amongst 

 many curious old plants, two specimens, in pots, of a Fuchsia 

 named F. coccinea^ which differed so greatly from the plant com- 

 monly so called in cultivation that I could not help being struck 

 by it. On inquiring their history, I was told that they had been 

 raised from a large plant formerly trained against the end of an 

 old stove, one of the earliest erected in England, and now pulled 

 down. This information Mr. W. Baxter had subsequently con- 

 firmed by his venerable father, who added that the large old 



