THE CALOPOGON. 



herbaceous. Many of them exhale a powerful fragrance. The 

 blossom of most of them takes on some curious or fantastic form, 

 as in the Lady's Slipper, already described, and in the Bee 

 Orchis, and Fly Orchis, and Toad Orchis, and many others, 

 named from their fancied resemblance to these creatures. An 

 old writer comments on this singular likeness in the case of the 

 Bee Orchis in this quaint fashion, — 



"At the top grow the flowers, resembling in shape the dead 

 carkasse of a Bee. There is no great use of them in physicke» 

 but they are chiefly regarded for the pleasant and beautiful 

 flowers, wherewith Nature hath seemed to play and disport 

 herself." 



The following lines from Langhorne make note of the same 

 strange deception : — 



See on that floweret's velvet breast, 



How close the busy vagrant lies! 

 His thin wrought plume, his downy breast, 



The ambrosial gold that swells his thighs. 



Perhaps his fragrant load may bind 

 His limbs; we'll set the captive free! 



I sought the living bee to find, 

 And found the picture of a bee. 



But by far the most wonderful distinction of the Orchis 

 family is the elaborate mechanism by which it is enabled to 

 compel the services of the insect world in sending its fertilizing 

 pollen from flower to flower. The studies which Mr. Darwin 

 has made and illustrated in " The Fertilization of Orchids," read 

 more like the story of a magician, or the doings in some 



