THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 235 
contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are ferti- 
lized by Insects,’ I have given a good deal of attention to the 
subject, and examined a great number of insects whose 
mouths have been thus encumbered, and hope before long to 
print rather a long paper on fertilizing insects in the 
‘Zoologist, as there certainly is not space enough for it in 
the ‘Entomologist.’ In the meantime I may give a few 
particulars here, leaving the general subject for a future 
paper. It appears ‘from Darwin’s work that scarcely any 
flower possesses the power of fertilizing itself; probably it 
will hereafter be shown that no flower or species has this 
power in perpetuity ; but this subject need not be discussed 
here. It will be sufficient to explain that in Orchids there 
are but two stamens, and each of these contain one pollen- 
mass, or pollinium, as it is called by Darwin. The moths, 
attracted by the sweet scent of the flowers, and being thereby 
apprised of the nectar-banquet contained in the flower, often 
crowd around it, and, in their eagerness to get at the sweets, 
press their heads against the stamens, and thus the cuticle of 
the anther probably gets ruptured by the pressure, and the 
pollinium then comes out of its retreat, and being furnished 
at the lower extremity with a circular adhesive disk,—very 
much like those round pieces of wetted leather which boys 
play with on the flag-stones of our pavements,—these disks 
attach themselves to the head, eyes, or mouth of the moth, 
and, thus fixed, they project like little clubs, and are carried 
to another flower, to which the moth flies as soon as it has 
rifled the sweets of the first, and to this second flower it 
imparts the pollen it had taken from the first. The bright 
Ba loars of flowers are given them to attract butterflies, bees, 
and flies, by day; the sweet scents of flowers are given them 
to attract moths by night: and, as though conscious of this 
duty, a great number of flowers—such for instance as the 
“night-flowering stock,” the ‘“ night-flowering Cereus,” the 
“night-smelling evening-primrose,’ &c.—only emit their 
fragrance when moths are on the wing. This is the case 
with Orchids,—those which have large, bright and beautiful, 
scarlet and yellow and purple flowers, and no scent—attract 
day-flying insects; those which have minute, and green or 
dull-coloured flowers have no beauty, but are almost invariably 
sweet-scented, and thus attract those moths which fly by 
night. Mr. Darwin has mentioned a specimen of Caradrina 
