6 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS 



labellum, he finds that those pink-veined edges that lured 

 him in curve hopelessly away from the daylight; but he is 

 not left in despair, for the hairs inside serve as a guide, 

 they all point back and up to a pair of narrow side doors, 

 plainly marked exit, through which he can squeeze. But 

 woe be to him if he is vain of his velvet coat, for he will 

 surely smear it with pollen as he crawls past either of those 

 open anthers. However, he will be rubbed clean by the 

 stigma that hangs like an inverted door-mat at the entrance 

 to the next blossom. 



The object of the brilliant veins and spots that converge 

 to the incurved opening of the pouch is to coax the bee to 

 squeeze under the stigma, thereby brushing it with the 

 pollen of the last flower he visited. When he is once in he 

 cannot scramble out any other way than through the small 

 opening directly under the anthers, so that he must perforce 

 take pollen with him to the next blossom, and perform, all 

 unconsciously to himself, the mysterious rites of cross 

 fertilisation. 



Mr. Gibson proved the actual passage of the bumblebee 

 by a simple experiment, which any one might repeat. He 

 had observed the torn and bruised lip occasionally perforated 

 by a hole, and he had long patiently watched in the haunts 

 of the Cypripedium, awaiting a natural demonstration of its 

 cross fertilisation. 



"At length," he writes, "in hopelessness of reward by such 

 means, I determined to see the process by more prosaic 

 methods. Gathering a cluster of the freshly opened flowers 



