258 ORCHIDEZ. 
Orchideous capellary leaf, and you reduce it at once to a 
not unusual type, such as occurs in Butomus etc. 
Apostasia differs from Orchidee in the extreme develop- 
ment of lateral stamina, and extreme suppression of the posti- 
cous one, which however barren it might be in Cypripedium, 
is nevertheless of large size. It also differs in the discretion 
of great part of the style, in the bilocular ovary, in the struc- 
ture of the ovule and in the pollen in some species. 
It is worthy of remark that the complete separation of the 
pieces opposite the sepals, is not universal. See Bauer's I llust. 
V. Dendrobii sp. 
The section of Arethusa bulbosa, t. VII. fig. 8, is also in ac- 
cordance with a pentandrous type, the sixth stamen being to- 
tally suppressed. 
9, Fertilization. 
"The existence of a peculiar structure of the male organs 
has in this, as in many other instances, led to a particular 
theory of the mode of fecundation. 
"That theory has been subsequently to a great extent dis- 
proved, and this order together with Asclepiadez in particular, 
have afforded striking instances of the danger of construct- 
ing theories in a science of observation, on any other base than 
observation. 
The peculiar characters of the male organs, in this family 
depend upon the close, and as it were, permanent aggregation 
of the particles composing the pollen, and of their attach- 
ment to a process, known to be of stigmatic origin, by a web 
of highly elastic structure, neither of these characters is 
strictly limited, although the first exists toa much greater 
extent than the second. 
And the theory built upon these peculiarities, supposed that 
the elastic web above noted, formed means of communica- 
tion by which the fecundating matter was enabled to reach 
the stigmatic surface. This theory was constructed at a time 
when we possessed no precise knowledge of the manner in 
