114 ORCHIDS. 
pairs of waxy pollen-masses are free, they are in Sarcochilus 
attached to a gland by a tender elastic thread (caudicle). The 
genus Dipodium responds to the latter in this respect, except that 
each pair of its pollen-masses is fixed to a separate thread ; hence 
the name. Dipodium punctatum is one of our most widely dis- 
tributed Orchids, particularly in forest-regions, where it is very 
conspicuous by its raceme of showy red spotted flowers, though it 
is devoid of leaves. It may be regarded as semiparasitic, its some- 
what tuberous root-fibres often adhering to roots of trees or shrubs 
or their remnants. The latter remark applies also to another 
Orchid of rarer occurrence, Gastrodia sesamoides ; but this plant 
belongs to a very different tribe of Orchideee with coherent- 
granular pollen-masses. It derives its generic name from the 
turgescence of the tube of its flowers ; while the specific name 
(not aptly) is derived from its fragrance, resembling that of the 
Sesam-flowers. Neither Dipodium nor Gastrodia participate in 
the green coloration of most plants, both being leafless ; but while 
the stem of the former is of a dark-purplish hue, that of the latter 
is of a pale somewhat brownish color, in which the flowers also 
largely share. The absence of green corpuscles (chlorophyll) is 
often concomitant to parasitic growth of plants, as demonstrated 
in our own colony also by Orobanche and Thesium, although 
in the Mistletoes chlorophyll is largely developed. Whenever 
nutrition is more powerfully sustained from a plant, on which the 
parasite preys, than from soil, less need perhaps for the assimila- 
tion of carbon exists through decomposition of carbonic acid from 
the air, the oxygen of which is set partly free through the action of 
the chlorophyllous portions of plants under the influence of light. 
Returning to subjects more immediately before us, it may be 
observed, that perhaps in no part of the globe the attractive 
beauty of the spring-herbs is surpassing ours through copiousness 
or elegance of orchideous plants. Few of ours are autumnal, 
one among them however of wide distribution, the small and 
slender Eriochilus autumnalis, generically so called, because the 
lip-like or rather tongue-like inner segment of the calyx being 
bearded. LHriochilus is however hardly more than a subgenus of 
Caladenia, to which the well-known Spider-Orchid (C. pulcher- 
