LAMARCK AND MR. DARWIN. 271 



" In the work just referred to (' The Fertilisation of 

 Orchids '), Mr. Darwin gives a series of the most won- 

 derful and minute contrivances, by which the visits of 

 insects are utilised for the fertilisation of orchids — 

 structures so wonderful that nothing could well be 

 more so, except the attribution of their origin to minute, 

 fortuitous, and indefinite variations. 



"The instances are too numerous and too long to 

 quote, but in his ' Origin of Species '■ he describes two 

 which must not be passed over. In one (coryanthes) 

 the orchid has its lower lip enlarged into a bucket, 

 above which stand two water-secreting horns. These 

 latter replenish the bucket, from which, when half- 

 filled, the water overflows by a spout on one side. Bees 

 visiting the flower fall into the bucket and crawl out 

 at the spout. By the peculiar arrangement of the parts 

 of the flower, the first bee which does so, carries away 

 the pollen mass glued to his back, and then when he 

 has his next involuntary bath in another flower, as he 

 crawls out, the pollen attached to him comes in contact 

 with the stigma of that second flower and fertilises it. 

 In the other example (catasetum), when a bee gnaws a 

 certain part of the flower, he inevitably touches a long 

 delicate projection which Mr. Darwin calls the ' antenna.' 

 'This antenna transmits a vibration to a membrane 

 which is instantly ruptured ; this sets free a spring by 

 which the pollen mass is shot forth like an arrow in 

 the right direction, and adheres by its viscid extremity 

 to the back of the bee ' " (" Genesis of Species," p. 63). 



No one can tell a story so charmingly as Mr. Darwin, 

 but I can no more believe that all this has come about 



