Noy.-DEc., 1920.] THE ORCHID REVIEW. 167 
covered with fairly long, red hairs. The larve live underground, in the dry 
slopes exposed to the sun. In the month of March, in the middle of warm 
sunny days, one frequently sees the males of this insect making their sinuous 
flight, and exploring the ramparts and fortifications of the towns of Algeria, 
and railway embankments which are favoured by O. speculum. They 
flutter about the slopes where the female will appear somewhat later. The 
flowers of O. speculum offer them some distraction during their long wait. 
If you seat yourself on one of these sunny slopes, with a small bunch of O. 
speculum blooms in your hand, you will soon percieve that the insects are 
in some way conscious of the presence of the flowers. They fly round, and 
soon one, two, three or even more will alight on the Ophrys; sometimes. 
two or three will jostle on the same flower, until one remains in position 
upon the lip. This will occur under the eyes of the observer, and on flowers 
held in the hand. The flowers of O. speculum, to the exclusion of other 
species of Ophrys, excercise a mysterious attraction to the males of Colpa 
aurea, for if you place in close proximity the flowers of other species of Ophrys 
they pay not the least attention to them. 
Careful observation of the insects (of which details are given) has shown 
that the flowers are not visited in search of nectar (as they have been seen 
to do in the case of other flowers). The attraction is due to the fact that 
the Ophrys lip, with its hairs, vaguely resembles the female of Colpa aurea. 
The object is quite obvious, and wheu the insect’s head touches the gland 
of the pollinia, the latter become attached between the eyes, and when the 
bee flies away it carries this bizarre coiffure in the form of two little horns. 
Insects have been observed with as many as six attached pollinia. The 
process is completed when the insect visits another flower, because the 
pollen then adheres to the viscid stigma. 
Whether the insect is attracted by sight alone or by some other sense 
is uncertain. Scent, as we know it, is not perceptable in the flower. An 
experiment was made to test this question. The hairs of the lip were 
completely removed from a number of flowers, soas to leave only the central 
blue blotch. When these were placed on a slope frequented by the Colpa, 
the flowers were visited in the usual way. A single flower was also inverted 
on the slope, so that the lip was underneath and invisible, but still the Colpa 
settled on it as ifin its normal position. The visits of the Colpa have also 
been observed where the Ophrys grows freely in the open fields. 
The flowers of Ophrys lutea are fertilised by a much smaller hymen- 
opteron, slightly smaller than a bee ; Jess hairy than Colpa aurea and of a 
sombre red. Fertilisation of the flower has been observed as they grow in 
the fields, and several of the insects were captured, and identified at the 
Paris Museum, but the name has been mislaid. This insect alights on the 
lip of the flower, in the reversed direction, with its head outwards, and the 
