200 The Great World's Farm 



vices could be dispensed with even in temperate latitudes 

 and in the plains. Quite the contrary. Most of the 

 European orchids are fertilized by bees, but just a few 

 species cannot get on without the help of moths. There 

 is a large sphinx-moth which carries pollen to and from 

 one species of orchid in a very curious way — on its eyes. 

 The pollen of this flower grows in tw^o m.asses, each 

 perched upon a stalk which passes through its center, and 

 to which the grains are united. At the base of the stalks 

 are tiny, button-shaped discs, one on each side of the 

 stigma, face to face. When the moth presses its head 

 into the center of the flower, the discs come into contact 

 with its eyes, and being very sticky, they adhere so firmly 

 that the v/hole thing is dragged out — stalk, pollen, and 

 all. A very strange object one of these moths is when it 

 is thus adorned, for the stalks, with their lumps of pollen 

 at the end, at first stand out straight, like horns in the 

 wrong place. In a minute or so, however, they contract 

 and bend down, and then the pollen is in exactly the right 

 position to be caught and held by the stigma of the next 

 blossom of the same species, which the insect must, one 

 would imagine, be in haste to enter if it knows how it may 

 get rid of its undesirable appendages. 



Orchid-blossoms remain in full beauty a long time, 

 whether cut or not, as long as they are not fertilized; but 

 when insects are allowed to get at them, they fade rapidly 

 and go to seed. 



Among the flowers specially attractive to moths in 

 Europe are the valerian, petunia, phlox, hop, nettle, pink, 

 ivy, clematis, pansy, jessamine, and honeysuckle, the last 

 being frequented, according to Gilbert White, by a large 

 sphinx-moth, which appears after dusk, and feeds, like 





