1 54 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



consider carnivorous species like the Drusera, which really 

 act as animals, we are struck by the genius that some of our 

 humblest flowers display in contriving that the visit of the 

 bee shall infallibly procure them the crossed fertilisation 

 they need. See the marvellous fashion in which the Orchis 

 Morio,'^ our humble country orchid, combines the play of 

 its rostellum and retinacula ; observe the mathematical and 

 automatic inclination and adhesion of its pollinia ; as also 

 the unerring double see-saw of the anthers of the wild sage, 

 which touch the body of the visiting insect at a particular 

 spot in order that the insect may, in its turn, touch the 

 stigma of the neighbouring flower at another particular spot; 

 watch, too, in the case of the '^edicularis Sylvatica, the 

 successive, calculated movements of its stigma ; and indeed 

 the entrance of the bee into any one of these three flowers 

 sets every organ vibrating, just as the skilful marksman 



' It is impossible to enter here into full details of the marvellous contrivance described 

 by Darwin. The scheme is roughly as follows : — The pollen, in the Orchis Morio, is not a 

 fine granular powder, but coheres in masses, known as " Pollinia." Of these masses there 

 are two, and at the end of the lower extremity of each is a viscous disc (the retinaculum), 

 enclosed in a kind of membranous sac (the rostellum), which the least touch will burst open. 

 When a bee alights on the flower, her head, moving forward to absorb the nectar, comes in 

 contact with the membranous sac, which splits asunder, laying bare the two viscous discs. 

 The glue of these discs enables the pollinia to adhere to the head of the insect, which, as it 

 leaves the flower, bears them off like two bulbous horns. Were these two pollen-laden horns 

 to remain straight and rigid at the moment when the bee enters a neighbouring orchid, they 

 would touch, and burst, the membranous sac of the second flower, but would not attain the 

 stigma, or female organ, which has to be fertilised, and lies underneath the membranous 

 sac. The genius of the Orchis Morio has foreseen the difficulty ; and, after thirty seconds 

 — in the time, that is, needed by the insect to absorb thenectarandbearitself off to another 

 flower — the disc of membrane dries and contracts, and the pollinium sweeps forward, to the 

 same side always and in one direction, its degree of inclination being such that, at the 

 moment of the bee's entrance into another flower, the thick end of the pollinium will be exactly 

 on the level of the stigma upon which it has to scatter its fertilising dust. {Cf., for full 

 details of this domestic drama in the unconscious world of flowers, Darwin's admirable 

 essay, " On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised 

 by Insects.") 



