AN ARISTOCRATIC FAMII.Y. 5 



Cypripedium, there sometimes appear to be but two. 

 There are always three petals, though one of these has 

 been so changed as to bear no resemblance to ordinary 

 petals, and the other two often take on most singular and 

 unpetal-like shapes. As to the other organs, the stamens 

 and pistils, we shall have to trust to specialists for assur- 

 ance that they are all there, or at least that there are traces 

 of them. One of the finest pieces of work Darwin did was 

 to stud}' out and demonstrate the ultimate structure of or- 

 chids. His labors proved what had been suspected by 

 shrewd botanists before, that there are present in the or- 

 chid clear proofs of its descent from ancestors with regu- 

 lar flowers, and that these flowers had fifteen parts in five 

 circles or whorls of three parts each, viz.: three sepals, 

 three petals, three outer stamens, three inner stamens and 

 three pistils. The three sepals onh'- remain with compar- 

 atively little change. Two of the petals remain in such a 

 form as to be recognizable, while the third has been de- 

 veloped into what is called the "lip," usually the most 

 conspicuous part of the flower. It is this lip which consti- 

 tutes the pouch or slipper in Cypripedium. Of the six 

 stamens there remain in Cypripedium two, in all other 

 genera one ; but they bear no resemblance to ordinary sta- 

 mens, the anthers alone being visible, and even they hav- 

 ing undergone very singular modification. The three pis- 

 tils have coalesced into one, the only outward indication 

 of their three-fold character being the presence in some 

 genera of a slightlj' three-lobed stigma. 



All these wonderful changes have been accomplished in 

 the course of long ages by what is known as natural selec- 

 tion, and every one of them was brought about for a pur- 

 pose, and that purpose was to effect cross-fertilization by 

 ensuring the removal of the pollen of one flower to the stig- 

 ma of any flower but itself. This brings in the agency of 

 insects and the way in which this aristocratic family of 



