THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 



25 



dependent insects possessing proboscides long enough to reach 

 the honey survived. 



Here let me quote from Darwin the passage previously 

 alluded to (he is speaking of the Angrcecum, a Madagascar 

 Orchid) : " As certain moths became larger, through natural 

 selection, . . . or as the proboscis 

 alone was lengthened to obtain 

 honey from the Angraecum and 

 other deep tubular flowers, those 

 individual plants of the Angraecum 

 which had the longest nectaries 

 (and the nectary varies much in 

 length in some Orchids), and which 



Fig. 6.— Showy Orchis.— Front view of 

 Consequently Compelled the moths flower, and ripened seed vessels. 



to insert their proboscides up to the very base (for then only 

 would the pollen be removed), would be the best fertilized. 

 These plants would yield most seed, and the seedlings would 

 generally inherit long nectaries ; and so it would be in suc- 

 cessive generations of the plant and of the moth," a race, as 

 he puts it, between nectary and proboscis, and this pleasing 

 theory, very likely, may apply to the long nectaries of some of 

 the species included in the present treatise, the Habenarias, for 

 example. 



I doubt if the Showy Orchis would gain anything by a 

 modification of structure ; certainly not in the matter of fer- 

 tilization, if my experience is the common one; for I rarely 

 come across a plant that has gone but of flower that has not 

 developed all its ovaries. This Orchis grows so low that it 

 must be visited by many kinds of small insects ; the short spur 

 would appear to tempt even those that would not naturally 

 come to it ; and as there are but a few blossoms to a spike, the 

 insect cannot be as fastidious as where there are many to 

 choose from. The character of the root has already been 

 described; but I have lately read Prof. Meehan's chapter on 



