CYPRIPEDIUM PUI'.ESCENS. LARGE YELLOW MOCCASIN FLOWER. 75 



Lady's Slipper written of as "our Lady's Slipper," and to this 

 day the popular names in France are "Sabot de la Vierge " and 

 " Soulier de Notre Dame," names having the same signification. 

 It is interesting to note how very much our knowledge of plants 

 has increased in modern times, and especially our knowledge 

 of the structure of orchids — the family to which Cypripedium 

 belongs. One of the earliest of American botanists. Dr. Cadwal- 

 lader Golden, of New York, writing, about 1744, to the cele- 

 brated Gronovius, remarks of Cypripcdimn, " two stamina seem 

 not sufficient to me to impregnate the great quantity of seed con- 

 tained in the capsule." Now we know that a mass of pollen is 

 made up of innumerable grains, every one of which is equal to 

 the fertilization of a single ovule. It is believed that the 

 flowers can be pollenized only by the aid of insects, and it is 

 remarkable that a plant is rarely found which has flowered and 

 not perfected seed, and yet again it is singular that insects are 

 rarely seen visiung the flowers. Dr. Asa Gray, who once made 

 a special study of these plants with a view to ascertain their 

 relation to insects, notes that though he found insect traces he 

 was never able to detect the insects actually at work. The 

 chapter of these remarkable circumstances, however, is not yet 

 complete, for we have to note that the seeds are very small, and 

 that an immense number are produced in each capsule, while 

 notwithstanding the trouble nature seems to have taken to 

 arrange that seed shall only follow the visits of insects to the 

 flowers, scarcely any of these seeds grow. We may note a 

 group of a few dozen plants in any one place, and for years 

 afterwards, with little increase in number in all that time. So 

 rare is it that we have any evidence of seeds of these plants 

 growing in their native places, that Dr. Jonathan Stokes, the 

 botanist of the olden time, after whom our Stokcsia is named, 

 was led to exclaim that " Gardeners might make the botanists 

 amends for rooting out these rare wild plants in their natural 

 places of growth and at the same time enrich themselves, if they 

 would prove by experiment that one at least of the orchis tribe 



