10 A NEW ZEALAND NATURALIST'S CALENDAR. 



is very juicy, and probably the fly which is gnat-like in 

 appearance, but with a somewhat stouter body is furnished 

 with a sharply-pointed trunk, with which it punctures the 

 succulent part. 



In examining these flowers and I have looked into 

 hundreds of them I was formerly puzzled by often finding 

 a small red spider in each flower. Spiders, and, indeed, all 

 things which creep and cannot fly, are quite unfitted for 

 pollinating flowers. But a closer examination revealed 

 this curious fact : the spiders evidently discovered that 

 flies went into these little flowers and stayed there some 

 time, so they went in after them and stayed too. This I 

 found was the case by noticing that occasionally only legs 

 and wings of flies occurred in the flowers, and on one occa- 

 sion the head of a fly was found glued on to the rostellum, 

 while the body had been demolished by a spider. 



That the flowers are visited and fertilised is shown by 

 their abundance, and by the fact that it is quite common 

 to find the pollinia withdrawn from their anthers. It 

 would be an interesting problem for some of our embryo 

 botanists to take up and find out and record exactly how 

 these little orchids are fertilised. 



These pretty little plants which I have been speaking 

 about here belong to a genus called Corysanihea, of which 

 seven species are said to occur in New Zealand. The same 

 genus is represented in Australia by three species, one 

 of which occurs along the eastern side from Tasmania 

 to Queensland, and has also been recorded from South 

 Australia and Western Australia. The requisite condi- 

 tions are, apparently, either a moist climate or proximity 

 to water. Going outside of New Zealand and Australia, 

 we only meet with Corysanthcs in some of the islands of 

 the Malay Archipelago. 



Several interesting orchids are to be found in flower in 

 November, though it is early enough for most of them. 

 This year, although the spring was so late in coming in, 

 growth has been so pronounced during the past month 

 that we may consider that in many respects the season is 

 now nearly up to normal time. The most specialised of 



