50 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS 



is pushed into a narrow aperture between two sticky discs, to 

 which are attached the stalks that bear the pollen masses. 

 They lie nearly horizontal, diverging at the disc end. The 

 stalks are two or three times as long as the pollen masses 

 which they bear. 



Which are the particular insect visitors that flutter 

 around this torch of the meadows, no Darwin has yet 

 recorded. It is a bit of observation that any one might 

 make who has long summer leisure to haunt a bog or brook 

 by which the Yellow Crested Orchis grows. The data are 

 all at hand in the blossom itself. The space between the 

 discs is about one and a half lines wide, so that an insect 

 must have a head about the same width if he would press 

 against them and on backing out draw forth the pollen 

 masses. The spur is from an inch to an inch and a half 

 in length, and is very slender, so the insect's tongue must 

 be about an inch long if he would be sure of reaching the 

 nectar. 



To prove the fact that the insects do visit it, it is only 

 necessary to count the seed capsules at the end of the summer. 

 But the act, the presence of the winged desire, the actual 

 entrance of the butterfly or moth into the fringed portal, 

 the flying off" with the pollen masses sticking by their discs to 

 his eyes and bending forward by their own weight, and his 

 entry to another where they will strike again the viscid 

 stigma just under the column, and send the thrill of creation 

 down the narrow twisted ovary to quicken the waiting 

 ovules — this is a mystery with a key — that needs only time 



