OUR WILD ORCHIDS 95 



helmet upon his head with his hands They produce seed in such vast pro- 

 cut off." fusion that " the great - grandchildren 



But in many places the Bee and the of a single plant of the Spotted Orchis 

 Fly 'may, be met with, and also the could," according to Darwin's calcu- 

 Frog Orchis. They all three grow in lation, " clothe with one uniform green 

 my parish, some years in considerable carpet the entire surface of the land 

 plenty. On June 17, 1904, I counted, throughout the globe." And the num- 

 beside an old chalk-pit, without moving ber of seeds produced by some other 

 from the spot where I was standing, species is even greater. Yet it is 

 between forty and fifty plants of the notorious, as he points out, that they 

 Fly Orchis. In some seasons the Bee are sparingly distributed. The Bee 

 Orchis is abundant on the downs hard Orchis, again, is unique among British 

 by, and on one particular slope the species in always fertilizing itself, and 

 Frog Orchis may be found. It is every flower therefore produces a cap- 

 very strange how uncertain some spe- sule, yet in some parts of England it 

 cies of this Order are in their appear- is not so numerous as the Fly, which 

 ance. The year 1904 was an extra- cannot fertilize itself, and is often 

 ordinary one for orchids ; the Bee imperfectly fertilized by insects. Once 

 could be gathered in armfuls, and even again, judging from the structure of 

 the exceedingly scarce Musk Orchis the flowers, it can hardly be doubted 

 (Herminium monarchist was plentiful that the Bee Orchis, like its relatives, 

 in the one restricted locality where it was at one period adapted for cross- 

 was first recorded as a Hampshire plant fertilization. Why, then, has it come 

 at the end of the eighteenth century. to fertilize itself ? Will it ever revert 



But there is much that is strange to its former state ; and if it does not 



and inexplicable in the habits of this so revert, will it become extinct ? 



singular tribe. In spite of Darwin's These questions, says Darwin, cannot 



investigations, which have clearly es- be answered ; but he once remarked 



tablished his main theory with regard to a friend that " one of the things 



to cross-fertilization through the agency that made him wish to live a few thou- 



of insects, many questions remain sand years was his desire to see the 



unanswered. What, for instance, extinction of the Bee Orchis an end 



checks the unlimited multiplication of to which he believed its self-fertilizing 



the Orchidaceae throughout the world ? habit was leading." 



