

barker] ROYALTY IN THE PLANT KINGDOM 129 



dence of flower and insect in this case. Provided with a butterfly 

 net and a lunch he entered a bog where the lady-slippers were in 

 full bloom — he also carried a bottle of citronella — (you see, this 

 was not an enchanted fairyland, else there would have been no 

 mosquitoes). Presently he found himself in the midst of a royal 

 company of orbed blossoms; they surrounded him on all sides; 

 by turning around he could count 200 within sight, and there were 

 countless others beyond. They rarely grew singly but usually in 

 clumps of several to as many as 20 or even more from a single root. 

 Here was an ideal place to seek an answer to the question. Would 

 it be answered here and now? What insects might he see in the 

 very act of pollinating the flowers? Everywhere about him were 

 the remains of last year's crop — old stems, almost all of which still 

 bore empty seed pods, which mutely attested the fact that each 

 flower had been pollinated. 



The observer settled himself as comfortably as possible amidst 

 the hummocks of wet moss, and the stunted cedars, and waited. 

 The minutes lengthened into hours, the hours passed, but not 

 unpleasantly in such a place amidst such company. Occasionally 

 a gay butterfly fluttered past, perhaps hesitated and approached 

 a flower, attracted by its color and faint oily perfume. Perhaps 

 he even alighted for a moment on the labellum of the flower. And 

 then the excitement of the observer waxed intense and the col- 

 lecting net was grasped tightly in readiness for action. But 

 quickly the butterfly always passed on — for why should he remain 

 when the flower set forth no available nectar, and even if it had 

 done so, of what use would have been his long, slender proboscis ? 

 The shape of the flower was obviously not adapted to him. Once 

 a pert little green grasshopper accidentally landed on the lip of the 

 flower, but he too went on his way as he had come. But some- 

 times a bee, flying swift and straight, came in a business-like man- 

 ner, alighted upon the labellum, proceeded immediately to enter it 

 thru the large aperture at the top and then crawled to the only 

 exit up under the column of the flower. This led her directly 

 underneath the stigma. There was just room for her body to pass 

 out on either side right underneath an anther, where she could not 

 avoid having her thorax smeared with the sticky pollen mass. The 

 flower was perfectly adapted to an insect of this size and shape and 

 the bee's acts and manner were tacit recognition of this fact. 

 Furthermore, such plants, as grew in the shade of the cedars and 



