50 . ORCHID HYBRIDS. 



shares the company of thoughts about what his senses 

 have been impressed with. I have strolled through 

 green-houses and have observed many a time how gar- 

 deners have afflicted the orchids with intense distress 

 by tying their spikes in the most unnatural positions. 

 Spikes produced in proper direction were tied to stakes 

 in the most horrible fashions, forcing the unfortunate 

 flowers to twist their necks against inclination and pos- 

 sibility. What would your Eucharis have done? What 

 any other flower? She would as the trivial saying has 

 it have turned to the light. So our orchid. But while 

 the others choose the shortest way, our orchid has but 

 one certain way or none at all. She twists her ovary 

 just so much and not any further, until her flowerface 

 has assumed the position becoming a face. Let it be 

 understood, though, that such motions can be gone 

 through by the spike and ovaries only so long as the 

 power of growing, the capacity of adaptation is potent 

 in our plant. 



When I first came into possession of Darwin's book 

 on orchids (and understood heartily little of its con- 

 tents) I was attracted by one sentence more than the 

 others, viz.: the ovary of the orchid flower is subjected 

 to a turning which takes place to put the lip into a 

 proper position to allow the visiting insect a landing 

 place (exceptions and contradictions as there are by 

 the legion). I felt obliged to lay aside a book for the 

 study of which I did not have at that time the necessary 

 primary knowledge. But my head was possessed of that 

 and other sentences further on. Every orchid which I 

 came across had to pass review: is your ovary turned or 

 not? I even went so far as to establish a list, register- 

 ing all species known to me according to the position of 

 their ovary. How vividly there again appear before 



