ORCHIDS. 17 
2. Great changes in the structure and coloring of flowers 
have been wrought by what may be termed chance and artificial 
hybridizing. 
3. Very many curious and even grotesque modifications have 
been effected by cross-fertilization through the agency of insects. 
This topic will receive further consideration on subsequent 
pages, and more appropriately when we come to speak of the 
Cypripedium. 
Until within a few years the general public—and scholars 
even supposed that trees and shrubs and flowers had been 
always from their creation the same; that daisies had ever 
been what daisies now are; that the crocus, primrose, dandelion, 
etc, had never been but what they are to-day. Truer views 
of nature are accepted now. The luscious strawberry can be 
‘traced back to an insignificant cinquefoil as its ancient parent. 
Our plum is only a cultivated variety of the blackthorn. All 
learned men agree that, after our. earth began to be clothed with 
vegetation, plants were few, and flowers very small and incon- 
spicuous, consisting probably of a single stamen and a single 
pistil each. 
Not now to go further back than the well-known history of 
the Amaryllids, these may be termed tubular lilies. The Iris 
family are a similar but rather more advanced species; and a 
small further growth or progress, might bring us to the Gla- 
diolus. We now quote verbatim from the admirable little work 
of Grant Allen, entitled “Flowers and their Pedigree.” 
“From these the step is not great to the orchids, undoubt- 
edly the highest of all the trinary flowers, with the triple arrange- 
ment almost entirely obscured, and with the most extraordinary 
