simply at the threshold of enlightening investigation. ® 
As in other fields of human experience, so in biology, 
it seems that unusual discoveries are announced almost 
simultaneously. Pouyanne may have formed very defi- 
nite conclusions regarding Ophrys speculum many years 
before he published the results of his observations in 1916, 
but the first reference to this symbiotic phenomenon was 
followed in 1925 and in 1927 by the announcements of 
the independent observations of Godfery in France and 
of Mrs. Coleman in Australia. 
Usually when we describe the pollination of orchids 
by insects we explain that the pollinia become attached 
to the insect’s proboscis, head or thorax and that this is 
so because the insect enters the flower head foremost and 
eventually comes in contact with the rostellum, that ex- 
traordinary third stigma, or female organ, modified to 
serve as an efficient means of attachment of the pollinia 
to the insect. But this is not always so. There are cases, 
*Robert Brown was of the opinion that the flowers of Ophrys apifera 
resemble bees to repel, not to attract, insects. Darwin in a footnote in 
his treatise, On the various Contrivances by which British and Foreign 
Orchids are fertilised by Insects, has the following: “‘Mr. Gerard E. 
Smith, in his Catalogue of Plants of S. Kent, 1829,p.25,says: ‘Mr. Price 
has frequently witnessed attacks made upon the Bee Orchis by a bee, 
similar to those troublesome Apis muscorum.’ What this sentence 
means I cannot conjecture.’’ Itis possible that we have here the first 
reference to pseudocopulation between insects and orchids. 
In the Journal of Botany (68 (1930) 280-281) H. G. Willis directs 
attention to pollination in the Fly Orchis ( Ophrys muscifera), stating 
that he saw a fly visit this species in 1877 and that a few years later 
an account of his observations was published in the Transactions of the 
Manchester Microscopical Society reporting him as having said, ‘‘To 
me at the time it seemed obvious that the male fly came to the flower 
mistaking it for a female.’’ Godfery has observed pollination in this 
species effected by the males of Gorytes mystaceus L., the insects be- 
having in a manner that suggested a preliminary phase of courtship. 
(Journ. Bot. 67 (1929) 299). 
[9] 
