THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 25 
dependent insects possessing proboscides long enough to reach 
the honey survived. | 
Here let me quote from Darwin the passage previously 
alluded to (he is speaking of the Angrecum, a Madagascar 
Orchid): “As certain moths became larger, through natural 
selection, . . . or as the proboscis 
alone was lengthened to obtain 
honey from the Angrecum and 
other deep tubular flowers, those 
individual plants of the Angraecum 
which had the longest nectaries 
(and the nectary varies much in 
length in some Orchids), and which fis. 6 a ie eee 
consequently compelled the moths _ flower, and ripened seed vessels. 
to insert their proboscides up to the very base (for then only 
would the pollen be removed), would be the best fertilized. 
These plants would yield most seed, and the seedlings would 
generally inherit long. nectaries; and so it would be in suc- 
cessive generations of the plant and of the moth,” a race, as 
he puts it, between nectary and proboscis, and this pleasing 
theory, very likely, may apply to the long nectaries of some of 
the species included in the present treatise, the Habenarias, for 
example. 
I doubt if the Showy Orchis would gain anything by a 
modification of structure; certainly not in the matter of fer- 
tilization, if my experience is the common one; for I rarely 
come across a plant that has gone out of flower that has not 
developed all its ovaries. This Orchis grows so low that it 
must be visited by many kinds of small insects; thé short spur 
would appear to tempt even those that would not naturally 
come to it; and as there are but a few blossoms to a spike, the 
insect cannot be as fastidious as where there are many to 
choose from. The character of the root has already been 
described; but I have lately read Prof. Meehan’s chapter on 
