128 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [13:4— April, 1917 



of their own. He feels himself an intruder, and moves about with 

 deference amongst them. He notices the bees coming and going 

 from flower to flower and, if he is a sentimentalist, he will regard 

 them as courtiers; if he has a smattering of biological knowledge, 

 he will say they are servants carrying the golden pollen masses so 

 that the needs of reproduction may be fulfilled; if he is a gross 

 materialist, he will perceive that the bees are visiting the flowers 

 for the sake of gathering pollen and possibly nectar intent solely 

 on satisfying their own selfish needs, and that the flowers in turn 

 are passively securing the services of the bees to effect what they 

 cannot do unaided — insure a set of seeds. For this purpose the 

 flaunting expanded sepals of gleaming white, the labellum suffused 

 with color; for this put pose its marvelous shape, that forces the 

 insect visitor to crawl thru it and out underneath the sticky stigma, 

 leaving upon its surface the vital fecundating pollen substance, and 

 then to scrape onto her thorax again, more pollen from this flower's 

 anthers, to be carried to the next flower she visits and thus bring 

 about cross-fertilization. Cold, utilitarian facts in the economy of 

 nature, but showing such marvelous perfection of mechanical 

 structures for definite functions, such correlation between the 

 needs of plant and insect and withal such beauty of color and form 

 appealing to man's esthetic sensibilities that there is forced upon 

 the observer an admiration for the ways of nature's working and 

 the beauty of her perfected forms. One can search far, in the 

 kingdom of nature, before discovering more perfect illustrations of 

 adaptation of structure to function or of dependence of one organ- 

 ism upon another than he will find here exemplified in this member 

 of that wonderful group — the orchid family. 



The flower is so constructed that no seed could ever be produced 

 without the service of some agent to transfer the pollen from 

 anther to stigma; it is utterly incapable of effecting self-fertiliza- 

 tion. The question arises, then: What insects are sponsors for 

 this plant's continued existence, and what species are these colors 

 and shapes and this rich, heavy odor especially suitable to attract? 

 Natural philosophers of a different age might have speculated and 

 theorized ingeniously, but we of to-day seek answer to such ques- 

 tions in the simple and commonsense way of going and watching 

 the plants where they are growing. 



The writer once had the opportunity of making some interesting 

 observations that threw light on this question of the interdepen- 



