INTRODUCTION 3 



sight-seeing cars where the conductor hurriedly 

 announces through his megaphone the names of 

 people who dwell in the residences along the way. 

 I seemed to get not so much as a bowing acquain- 

 tance with the passing flowers; I learned nothing 

 of their lives and habits, and gathered no gossip 

 about their large circle of acquaintances among 

 their insect guests. 



Only when I came to our native orchids and be- 

 gan to rummage the bogs and the books for these 

 rare treasures did I find a well-recognised affinity 

 between the two great kingdoms. I had to travel 

 far, and do a long novitiate, before the great mys- 

 teries of the flowers were revealed. 



My experience, however, was but history re- 

 peated, for knowledge on the subject came very 

 slowly: nearly two centuries were consumed by 

 great naturalists in scientific research ere the great 

 and simple laws were truly comprehended. The 

 Golden Age was slow to pass away, and the old 

 stories and legends about flowers and their slaves, 

 the insects, were long in dying; and men seemed 

 reluctant to question the doings of Nature about 

 them, to investigate her conduct, and reduce her 

 to a scientific formula. 



From the days of Father Adam, and for untold 

 centuries, men had sown their seeds, and gathered 



