APPENDIX 



grown for the first time in Europe was opened to the public, those who 

 entered were obliged to fly, not being able to endure the pestilential 

 exhalations. B. Beccarii appears to grow originally on the ground, or at 

 least to germinate near the foot of tree-trunks, along which its stems grow 

 and take root tenaciously, climbing up spirally, with symmetrical, equally- 

 distanced coils, to a great height. Its enormous coriaceous leaves, some 

 of which measure over twenty inches in length and fourteen in width, 

 follow the spirals of the stem at regular intervals, forming as a whole an 

 object of great beauty, which one cannot but admire whenever one has 

 the good fortune to come across it. 



The antithesis of this colossus amongst the Orchidece, perhaps the 

 biggest in the entire group, is a pygmy orchid which I discovered also 

 in Sarawak. It is the smallest known, and strange to say it also is a 

 Bidbophylliwi, which Professors Reichenbach and Pfitzer have designated 

 as Odoardi, kindly naming it after me. On this species Professor E. 

 Pfitzer has written an instructive memoir, showing some interesting 

 and remarkable structural peculiarities which characterise this diminutive 

 orchid. It is one of those species which adhere to the naked and nearly 

 smooth bark of the big branches of the highest trees, and it is most difficult 

 to find, unless one can minutely examine the parts its prefers to grow on. 

 I discovered it whilst carefully searching the big branches of a great 

 tree which had been felled near Kuching on a spot where a plantation 

 was being established. 



Bulbophyllum Beccarii, as we have seen, is a muscarian orchid, viz. one 

 of those which give off a putrid stench, thus attracting flies, who un- 

 consciously perform the important function of aiding fecundation. This 

 method of attracting insects is very rare amongst orchids, whose flowers 

 are usually extremely fragrant, and appeal rather t© the tastes of butter- 

 flies and moths. It is not only through the scent of their flowers, however, 

 that orchids attract insects, but also — and very considerably — by their 

 strange shapes. No flowers resemble insects, especially the Lepidoptera, 

 more closely than do those of certain orchids. I need only mention Phalce- 

 noftsis amongst Bornean species. Orchids, indeed, may well be termed 

 the butterflies of the Vegetable Kingdom. And this is a certain proof 

 of the connexion which exists, or has existed, between insects and the 

 flowers of these plants, a subject on which Darwin made his well-known 

 and highly interesting investigations. Yet up to the present, but little 

 is known regarding the insects which visit and fertilise the flowers of the 

 more gaudy orchids of tropical lands. It is true that we are now acquainted 

 with a great number of beautiful orchids which are cultivated in our 

 hothouses, where they blossom abundantly. Indeed, no other family 

 of tropical plants is better known, in the living condition. But in our 

 hothouses those insects which in a state of nature have biological rela- 

 tion with the flowers of orchids are not to be found, whilst collectors 

 have as yet told us little or nothing on this subject, and this for many 

 reasons, amongst which the more important is perhaps the fact that orchid- 

 hunters often get their plants through natives. Moreover, to do good 

 work on this subject collectors ought to be equally good botanists and 

 entomologists. And even the true botanist has rarely occasion to make 

 observations and researches on the subject, for the flowering of orchids 



399 



