HARD WICKKS S CIENCE- G OSS J P. 



247 



destroy their combs and nests ; and Col. Newman, 

 who has long attended to the habits of humble-bees, 

 believes that ' more than two-thirds of them are 

 thus destroyed all over England.' Now the number 

 of mice is largely dependent, as everyone knows, on 

 the number of cats ; and Col. Newman says 'near 

 villages and small towns I have found the nests of 

 humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which 

 I attribute to the number of cats that destroy mice.' 

 Hence it is quite credible that the presence of a feline 

 animal in large numbers in a district might determine, 

 through the intervention first of mice and then of 

 bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that dis- 

 trict ! " Shall I be accused of irreverence if I 

 suggest, as an extension of this idea, that the presence 

 or absence in any locality of spinster ladies may 

 account for the occurrence of Orobanche minor in the 

 fields ? 



Besides these notices, it will only be honest to 

 mention the criticisms that have come to me from 

 various gentlemen interested in British Orchids, to 

 whom I applied for help. Sir John Lubbock and 

 Sir Joseph Hooker were, of course, too busy to 

 attend, and Mr. James Britten was afraid that he was 

 too unimaginative to be convinced. But Professor 

 Allman was most kindly encouraging, and considered 

 it well to take up some single plant and work out its 

 structure and history and to develop its significance in 

 the economy of nature. The Rev. C. Wolley Dod 

 confessed that he was not in a position to question 

 many of the statements, and had no doubt they were 

 correct : "but if the tuber really changes its position 

 and depth in the soil by being dragged upwards and 

 downwar Is by the roots [I didn't quite say that], it 

 is a very extraordinary arrangement, and one I should 

 not believe, if it did not rest on careful and repeated 

 observations." [Hooker, " Science Primer," p. 40, and 

 Schleiden's "Principles of Botany," p. 294.] The 

 statement that the Orchis will not flower next year 

 if the flower-stalk is broken is also new to me, though 

 I cannot at present refute it. I have seen it stated 

 that if Terrestrial Orchises are prevented flowering for 

 two or three years by breaking off the bud, the flower 

 becomes as it were "cumulative," being very large. 

 I have n<> doubt that Orchis tubers pass many years 

 without flowering, or as it were dormant, for when 

 a coppice is cleared, Orchises flower which were not 

 flowering whilst overgrown. [I have this year 

 proved the fact of breaking the stem, and find it 

 partly correct". For instance, the field, from which 

 I obtained the specimen, figured on p. 54, was liter- 

 ally coveied with O. mascula and 0. morio in April 

 18S2. I visited the field three times. On the last 

 visit, all the plants were mangled and crushed by a 

 roller, and in April 1SS3 there was not a plant to be 

 seen. Again, in April 1882, I noticed two plants of 

 O. mascula, and saw the flowerspikes picked, and 

 determined to observe this year the result. On Jan. 

 1 6th, 1S83, one of these plants was found out in full 



leaf, but it never flowered ; and on April 13th, 1S83, 

 the other plant was found with a spike five inches 

 long ready to come out. It will be alluded to feather 

 on.] As regards the depredations of mice amongst 

 bulbs, crocuses are almost the only bulbs which 

 suffer — no narcissus nor hyacinth being ever touched. 

 [See the next letter.] 



Mr. A. D. Webster, whose acquaintance with 

 British Orchids entitles him to much attention, 

 doesn't believe that the spots on the leaves can be 

 reduced by lime, as his experiments and observa- 

 tions lead him to think otherwise. Once he went 

 collecting deeply-spotted orchises, and found pieces 

 of old mortar adhering to their roots. He also 

 planted a clump of orchises in his garden in 

 loam and lime rubbish, and they now are as much, 

 if not more, spotted than before. [Is one year 

 sufficient to establish this objection ?] He can't say 

 that plants with spotted leaves are more common in 

 the hedges than in the open ground. [In a subse- 

 quent letter, he thought he was wrong on this point.] 

 On the lawn at Penrhyn Castle, where the ground 

 has not been disturbed for a hundred years [twenty 

 years in a subsequent letter], a great quantity of 

 plain and spotted plants grow side by side, and many 

 of both sorts are devoured by something. \Aradus 

 corticalis?\ He fancies that breaking a spike off 

 strengthens next year's growth, and is quite certain 

 that it is so in the case of the Butterfly orchis. [See 

 last letter.] Destroying the tuber does not prevent 

 the formation of the new one, nor does it in any way 

 hinder the healthy development of the following 

 plant. Mice are very fond of the tubers of O. maculata, 

 a fact observed on March 7th, 1S83, and slugs will 

 eat the leaves of O. mascula, a fact also observed 

 many times during the same week. 



The Rev. B. S. Maiden doesn't think the leaves 

 increase in number by age, and of the hundreds of 

 O. mascula noticed in May in Kent, only one had 

 pure light green leaves without spots. 



The Rev. A. II. Malan didn't understand the 

 query about the age of the tuber on p. 53, oc- 

 curring as it did, just after the statement that 

 the tuber survived eighteen months. [It has 

 been explained.] He then says, " you are quite 

 wrong in comparing the scent of the tuber to the 

 smell of nitrate of silver, for, after close attention 

 to photographic chemicals for two years, I have 

 never been able to detect the slightest smell either 

 in the dry crystals or the aqueous solution." [It would 

 be kind of Mr. Malan if he would state what the 

 chemical is that has a scent like the scent of O. 

 mascula. I have repeatedly asked him, and I am 

 still in hopes of receiving an answer.] lie also 

 doubts if propolis is secreted, as artificial propolis is 

 made of beeswax and resin. 



Mr. Julius Neve doesn't see that I notice the 

 horizontal annual motion of the tuber [p. 54], 

 because in the course of years a plant will travel 



