THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 77 



what narrower than the sepals and alternating with them. 

 Representing the first circle of stamens were two, instead of 

 one, fleshy dilatated triangular bodies occupying the normal 

 position, that is alternating with the petals. They resembled 

 in thickness and in general shape the one in the normal flower, 

 and were also spotted like it, but were somewhat smaller and 

 not bent, but erect or nearly so. The second staminal circle 

 consisted of three fully developed stamens inserted on the 

 column opposite the petals and closely resembling those of the 

 normal flower in structure, except that coalescence with the style 

 (the part of the pistil that bears the stigma) was less complete, 

 and the connective or projection at the back of the anther was 

 rather more distinct. The stigma was very nearly equally 

 three-lobed, and the lobes were conspicuous and arranged alter- 

 nately with the stamens. The column was but slightly bent, 

 the ovary scarcely twisted, and the flower was but slightly bent 

 to one side. Here, in a genus affording some of the most strik- 

 ingly irregular flowers in nature, was a flower all but regular, 

 and unsymmetrical only in not possessing even a vestige of the 

 third stamen of the first staminal circle. This specimen tends 

 to establish the conclusion, if regarded as an instance of rever- 

 sion to an ancestral type, that the large, fleshy dilatated trian- 

 gular organ of the ordinary flower is the rudiment of a stamen 

 belonging to the outer staminal circle. No doubt the organ orig- 

 inated by the disappearance of the anther and the broadening 

 and thickening of the filament and its extension, the connective. 

 In fact, in the monstrosity under consideration, the fertile sta- 

 mens were, when viewed from the back, very much like minia- 

 tures of the two rudiments of the outer circle. 



" The missing stamen of the outer circle had left no trace be- 

 hind, and there was no evidence, either from difference in size or 

 difference in venation of the petals, that it had become confluent 

 with one of them. It would seem probable that the lip, if it is 

 a compound organ at all, is made up merely of the lower petal 



