xviii INTRODUCTION 



Humboldt tells us, "in the valle}s of the Peruvian Andes 

 that the entire life of a painter would be too short to delineate 

 all the magnificent forms which adorn those deep recesses." 



Like scions of a noble race, they have a curiously de- 

 vised heraldry and may be known by their horns and 

 antlers, tails and ears, and queerly fashioned crests. Like 

 the lords of feudal days, they are served by many, who 

 in serving serve themselves; for the insects that fetch and 

 carry their pollen live on their lord's bounty in the form 

 of nectar. To some extent all flowers, as all mankind, live 

 according to the same law, but in the orchid race the adapta- 

 tion is finer. Just as there is more ceremony connected 

 with taking a meal in a baron's castle than at a farmhouse, 

 so there is more ceremony about the orchids' guests. The 

 goldenrod is swarmed with the common striped bugs and 

 flies, but the orchids have each their one or few bidden 

 guests, who come as though specially invited. It is no fox- 

 and-crane feast, for the misfits and loungers of the insect 

 world. The moths that come to an orchid from any part 

 of the world are born to feast from its particular cups. 

 Their coiled tongues are of exactly the same length as the 

 spur that holds the nectar, and their heads are adapted to 

 the space between the pollen sacs. 



The social relations of the orchids are, as with man, the 

 tempting and absorbing topic, and their devices to woo 

 the insects, like the charms of a heroine of romance, make 

 us forget that there is a purely domestic and mundane side 

 of life in the orchid's world as well as in the human. The 



