THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND. m 



access to the nectary except from the front. A short bristle, 

 slid along the base of the lip and into the nectary for some 

 distance, will not touch the viscid discs, they lying a little too 

 far back ; but on pushing it down deep into the long and 

 curving spur (only the lower half or quarter of which is filled 

 with nectar) it has to be bowed back somewhat, when it 

 catches the disc ; so that before an insect can have drained the 

 nectary, the pollen-masses will be affixed to the base or upper 

 part of its proboscis, or to the forehead of a smaller insect. 

 When extricated, the movement of depression is prompt — 

 within a few seconds — and on re-application, the pollen is 

 accurately brought into contact with the stigma. The anther- 

 cells are widely separated but little divergent, their tapering 

 bases (supported as in H. laccra), project strongly, the discs 

 looking forward and downward. In both H. psy 'codes and H. 

 laccra the nectar appears to be much more plentiful in the 

 spurs of older flowers than of freshly opened ones, most 

 so indeed in blossoms which had their pollen removed and 

 their stigma fertilized several days before, and which were 

 becoming effete. In such flowers the spur was often half full 

 in the present species, and sometimes almost full in H. laccra. 

 But although little had dripped down to the bottom of the 

 spur in freshly opened blossoms, the walls were moistened with 

 nectar throughout its length." 



The botanist quoted when C. spectabile was spoken of, gives 

 in the same paper some observations made at different times 

 during the month of August. " A Sesia* began to suck nectar 

 (from a plant of H. psycodes), poised on the wing. It visited 

 more than a dozen flowers, proceeding spirally up the spike, 

 and I found about thirty pollinia attached to its proboscis 

 near the base. They were all in a space of less than a tenth 

 of an inch in length and much crowded. Those nearest the 

 tip of the proboscis had lost much of their pollen by contact 



S. Thysbe, Fabr. 



