30 UOW PLANTS EMPLOY INSECTS TO WORK FOR THKM, 



Others the disks are borne directly upon the end of the stalk, are generally closer 

 together, and get applied to the front of the head, or sometimes to the proboscis 

 of the insect. 



60. When a pollen-mass, thus carried on the head of an insect, is brought into 

 contact with the stigma, some of the pollen will cleave to its glutinous surface 

 and be left there, the little threads that bind it to the stalk giving way ; another 

 portion will be left upon the stigma of the next flower visited, perhaps on the next 

 also, and so nearly all the pollen be turned to good account. Sometimes the ad- 

 hesion of the disk to the insect's eye is less strong than the threads that bind the 

 grains to the stalk on the one hand, and than the adhesion to the stigma on the 

 other. Then the whole pollen-mass is left upon the stigma of that flower, and its 

 pollen taken in turn, to be exchanged for that of the next flower ; and so on. In 

 any case each blossom will be fertilized by the pollen of some other blossom, 

 which is the end in view ; and a more ingenious contrivance for the purpose can- 

 not be imagined. 



61. The student should see all these curious things with his or her own eyes, in 

 order fully to comprehend and enjoy them. Once understood in our common wild 

 Orchises, it will be equally interesting to find out how it is done, in more or less 

 different and varied ways 



62. In other Orchids, — whether wild ones, such as Ladies' Tresses, Calnpocion, 

 etc., or in those various and more gorgeous ones, mostly air-plants of tropical re- 

 gions, which adorn rich conservatories. Some of these curiously resemble butter- 

 flies themselves, — either a swarm of them, as some of the smaller ones in a clus- 

 ter on a long light stalk, fluttering with every breath of air ; some are like a large, 

 single, gorgeous, orange and spotted butterfly : Oncidiiim Papilio, for example 

 (Fig. 22), which takes its name from the singular likeness, Papilio being Latin for 

 butterfly ; and Phalcenopsis, a plant of which, greatly reduced in size, is represented 

 on the vignette title-page (upper right-hand comer), with large white flowers, 

 takes its name from its resemblance to a moth. Can the likeness be a sort of 

 decoy to allure the very kinds of insect that are wanted for fertilizing these same 

 flowers 1 Sometimes the strange shapes are not like insects ; the flowers of 

 Stanhopea tigrina, for example (figured at the top of the vignette title-page), 

 resembling in color and form rather the head of a cuttle-fish than any known 

 insect. 



63. In lady'S-Slippcr, or Cypripedium, the plan for securing fertilization is so dif- 



