38 OPHRE.f:. Chap. I, 



dicates that moths do not go to wcrk in a quite sense- 

 less manner.* 



Nature may be said to have trisd this same experi- 

 ment, but not quite fairly ; for Orchis pyramidalu^ 

 as shown by Mr. Bentham,t often produces monstrous 

 flowers without a nectary, or with a short and imperfect 

 one. Sir C. Lyell sent me several spikes from Folke- 

 stone with many flowers in this condition : I found six 

 without a vestige of a nectary, and their pollinia had 

 not been removed. In about a dozen other flowers, 

 having either short nectaries, or A\ith the labellum 

 imperfect, the guiding ridges being either absent or 

 developed in excess and rendered foliaceous, the 

 pollinia in one alone had been removed, and the ovti- 

 rium of another flower was swelling. Yet I found 

 that the saddle-formed discs in these eio-hteen flowers 

 were perfect, and that they readily clasped a needle 

 when mserted in the jjroper place. Moths had removed 

 the pollinia, and had thoroughly fertilised the perfect 

 flowers on the same spikes ; so that they must have 

 neglected the monstrous flowers, or, if visiting them, 

 the derangement in the complex mechanism of the 

 parts had hindered the removement of the pollinia, 

 and prevented their fertilisation. 



Xotwithstanding these several facts I still suspected 

 that nectar must be secreted by our common Orchids, 



* KniT C'Bedcutung der Xek- the corolla, leavinpr the nectary, of 



taiieu,' 1S33, p. 123) cut off the forty flowers of Orchid worjo, 'and 



nectaries of fifteen flowers of these set no capsules; and this 



Gymnudenia conopxea, and they case shows that insects are guiiled 



did nut proihice a single capsule : to the flowers by tlie corolla, 



he also triated in the same man- Sixteen flowers of Platanthera 



ner fifteen flowers o[ I'latanthera treated in tlie same manner Lore 



or Ilahcnaria hifoUa, and these only one capsule. Similar experi- 



set only five capsules ; but then it meuts made by him on (-lymna- 



sliould be observed that the nee- denia seem to me open to dmibt. 

 tarits of both these orcliids con- f ' Handbook of the Britisli 



tain free nectar. He also cut off Flora,' 1858, p. 501. 



